Challenge Owners
Meet the Challenge Owners, 23 industry members coming from 4 target value chains which are setting specific challenges within the context of the regional circular Mission, formulated in a way to help their owners in meeting their needs, but most importantly, to contribute to a broader mission of achieving sustainable industry transformation.
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Food, Water & Nutrients
Mission of South-West (Portugal, Spain, Southern France)
“Support Iberian farmers, producers, and consumers in a 3R agricultural revolution (one that is regional, regenerative, and resource-efficient) through platforms, tools, financial incentives, education, and transparent information.”
Developing a tool to help upcycle geographically distributed food surplus
Mission of North-East (Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia)
Build more resilient regional food systems by improving farmers’ access to resources and fostering closer connections between farmers and consumers to reduce the distance between production and consumption, to facilitate the production of quality food, and to inspire more sustainable localised consumption and production.
Developing tools to improve and increase farmers online visibility to potential customers.
Mission of East (Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia)
Leverage digitalization, data-centric approaches, biotech, and other solutions to increase the transparency and traceability of the agri-food value chain, reduce food waste, and radically reduce impacts stemming from meat and dairy production.
Developing a solution to facilitate better understanding of crop-based carbon emissions
Designing and encouraging the adoption of novel meat free alternatives.
Mission of South-East (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Serbia, Ukraine)
“Foster closer collaboration between farmers, distributors, and retailers throughout the regional food value chain, and increase their capacity to leverage R&D, sustainable technologies and production methods, and circular strategies to help them become more resilient, in the move towards a regenerative, circular food value chain.”
Producing a solution for the organic waste valorization
Building digitized and scalable midstream infrastructure for small-chain fresh food supply
Textiles
Mission of North-West (Netherlands, Northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland)
Leverage digitisation and data by connecting actors in the textile value chain in the EU to empower decision-making towards a higher R circular economy by increasing transparency and traceability
Developing data-driven approaches to enable circular product strategies.
Missions of Centre-South (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Malta)
1. “Enable greater transparency, traceability and verifiability of product-level data and incentivise reduced production impacts by improving mechanisms for data collection, verification and sharing.” 2. “Develop new digital solutions, production technologies and services to drive circularity throughout the whole lifecycle of products, whilst encouraging greater collaboration across the value chain, and increasing awareness of consumers of the impacts of their clothing.”
Developing a verification tool for environmentally friendly claims made by textile suppliers
Increasing the access to and affordability of circular services and reverse logistics
Missions of Centre-South (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Malta)
1. “Enable greater transparency, traceability and verifiability of product-level data and incentivise reduced production impacts by improving mechanisms for data collection, verification and sharing.” 2. “Develop new digital solutions, production technologies and services to drive circularity throughout the whole lifecycle of products, whilst encouraging greater collaboration across the value chain, and increasing awareness of consumers of the impacts of their clothing.”
Developing a verification tool for environmentally friendly claims made by textile suppliers
Increasing the access to and affordability of circular services and reverse logistics
Plastics & Packaging
Mission of Centre-North ( Germany Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Finland)
Leverage circular design, enabling technologies, and knowledge sharing to reduce and replace single-use plastics and to maximise the potential of packaging solutions that close material loops, while enabling the main value chain actor across to adopt them by 2030.
Communicating the comprehensive sustainability impacts of recycled products to customers
Designing a robust take-back system for paint packaging
Developing reusable smart packaging for cosmetic products and beauty care industry
Developing efficient technology and materials which can replace polyurethane foam