The EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste publishes a monthly newsletter to help Platform members stay connected, inform all interested stakeholders about Platform members’ activities and inspire further action in food loss and waste prevention.
Red Alimenta is an organisation of volunteers that collects surplus food and delivers it to people in need. The network of volunteers in different neighbourhoods of the city collects and distributes surplus prepared food from restaurants, schools or hospitals.
The Coordination Group decided, in autumn 2019, to create leadeship groups to hold in-depth discuss and deliver orientations on priority topics.
Food waste generates around 8% of the global greenhouse emissions. In their reflection document, the ECESP leadership group led by Copa-Cogeca discussed ways to reduce food waste and to maximise the circularity of food production.
The travel & tourism industry has touchpoints with most, if not all, key value chains and material flows in society and is therefore very relevant to consider for the circular economy transition.
To guide a sustainable recovery and development of the industry post COVID-19, this publication introduces key circular economy principles and concepts in the context of travel & tourism. This report provides private tourism operators with a robust introduction to circular economy concepts and how these apply to their operations and business transformation.
It also offers guidance to policymakers, regulators, and trade bodies on possible circular economy-inspired policy and business development directions.
The CirQuality OWL project is funded by the EU (ERDF) and the Federal State North-Rhine Westfalia (NRW) with the aim of fostering the circular economy in the area.
Seven regional partners from the different fields (from energy to technologies to food to universities and associations) teamed up to use the circular economy to get the region off the ground in an innovative, crisis-proof, resilient and sustainable way. Together they are jointly striving for the following goals:
The AZMUD Project proposes innovations which will help reduce the consumption of water, energy, nutrients and pesticides, and promote the use of waste water in greenhouse cultivations.
In Joure (NL) the Jacobs Douwe Egberts plant uses spent coffee grounds as a bio-fuel to produce the steam needed for its production process.
FoodDrinkEurope - an organisation representing Europe's food and drinks industry - has designed a website explaining what the industry is currently doing to enhance a resource-efficient circular economy.
Entitled Ingredients for a Circular Economy, the website specifically looks at the areas of farming, manufacturing, sustainable packaging and consumers, providing numerous examples of how the European food and drinks industry is helping to promote circular economy. The website also sets out policy recommendations for how to unlock further sustainable growth and innovation for a resource-efficient circular economy in the food and drinks industry.
The Valumics webinar "Putting solutions on the table", to be held on 16 July, at 15.00-16.30 (CEST), aims at discussing challenges and opportunities to support Europeans to transition towards more sustainable food consumption behaviours.
The European Policy Centre’s (EPC) Task Force called Digital Roadmap to Circular Economy has explored the linkages between digitalisation and circular economy, the opportunities created by data and digitally-enabled solutions, and the challenges associated with harnessing their full potential for the transition to a circular economy.
The project represents a pioneering endeavour in exploring the interconnections between the digital and green transformations and considers the implications for EU policymaking.
The final publication The circular economy: Going digital and its executive summary show that digitalisation can offer enormous possibilities for the transition to a more sustainable, circular economy but it is essential to steer it in the right direction.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) has always been a meeting place for Sweden’s future. It builds bridges between the business community, the public sector, academia and the political sphere.
Its two-year project "Resource Effectiveness and the Circular Economy" was aimed at making Sweden more competitive in a future with finite resources, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, by economising on resources and developing new technologies, services and business models in five areas:
Read the synthesis report, marking the completion of the project, which presents the most important conclusions, recommendations and action plans from the five subprojects.
The CYCLE 2013-2017 interdisciplinary project, supported by the Research Council of Norway, focused on the food supply chain from both agriculture and marine sectors, with the aim to improve utilisation of raw materials in a bio-economical perspective.
Launched in November 2019, Sporos aims to become the first platform for impact investment and collaboration that adds value to SMEs in Greece and Southeastern Europe, on the basis of the Circular Economy.
Sporos utilises mezzanine sustainable financing tools, combined with consultancy services and environmental, social and governance (ESG) and sustainable development goal (SDG) metrics.
Copa-Cogeca is sharing the initiatives of its members that demonstrate the many actions taken by EU farmers and cooperatives to deal with the Covid-19 crisis.
Jerónimo Martins, a food retailer operating in Colombia, Portugal and Poland is committed to reducing 50% of the food waste produced in its operations by 2025, compared to 2016.
The coronavirus crisis has disastrous human and economic consequences, revealing our system's exposure to a variety of risks. As the pandemic forces us to adapt our daily lives in ways we would not have imagined, it is also challenging us to rethink the systems that underpin the economy.
While addressing public health consequences is clearly the priority, before the crisis, momentum had already been increasing around the need for a system reset, and the potential of a circular model.
Far from the pandemic pushing the circular economy agenda to the bottom of the list, this article by Jocelyn Blériot at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation highlights and reiterates that it is now more relevant than ever, and sets out to explore the wider possibilities for recovery.
The GLOPACK (Granting society with LOw environmental impact innovative PACKaging) project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research programme, investigates food packaging with no environmental footprint and the ability to extend the shelf-life of food products.
The GLOPACK position paper aims at clarifying many debatable points related to bioplastics and biodegradability, especially terminology, and focuses on the benefits of biodegradable (in natural conditions) packaging material that can help the food sector enter the virtuous loop of the circular economy.
The paper also proposes some recommendations (basic, strategic and tactical interventions) to help all stakeholders in the food packaging sector to align with the common goal of ending plastic pollution.
PermaFungi is a Brussels-based social cooperative that recycles waste coffee grounds into different upcycled products.
Up to 90 million tonnes of food are wasted every year in the EU, half of which is generated at production and/or processing stage.
Being highly versatile and efficient, insects can bio-transform many of these materials (before they become "waste") into a wide range of higher-value products and ingredients that can further be included into the food and feed chains. Their added value goes beyond that of an alternative feed ingredient.
The lower Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) of insects confirms their efficacy, but also their ability to concentrate lower value materials into ingredients of superior quality, such as proteins and lipids, in line with the natural nutritional needs of aquaculture, poultry or swine.
Drawing on the results of CIRC4Life, the event aims to present examples of circular business models, discuss barriers and enablers, as well as how to incentivise consumers to engage with circular practices. It will also discuss the new Circular Economy Action Plan by the European Commission.
The GLOPACK project is investigating food packaging with no environmental footprint and the ability to extend the shelf life of food products.
The project is focusing on three food packaging areas:
The GLOPACk project operates a multistakeholder platform to gather the experts of the whole food and packaging supply chain. The members of the Stakeholders' Platform are involved in the actitivies of the project via webinars, stakeholder events and joint development of documents.
Berlin has the potential to become the first Circular City in Germany, due to its growing variety of initiatives, grass-roots and research work in the area of circular economy (CE).
This report provides information on the development of the project Circular Berlin, which started in 2018 and is financed by the EIT, under Horizon 2020.
The project consists of 4 phases:
Karma is a Swedish startup founded in Stockholm, November 2016. Their app connects surplus food from restaurants, cafes and grocery stores to consumers for a lower price. As a result, users eat great food for less and businesses receive an additional revenue stream — all while reducing food waste.
The Commission is organising a public conference on food loss and waste prevention in the framework of the 7th meeting of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste, to help define the EU action agenda and path towards the global target of halving food waste by 2030.
