About Living Labs

DISCOVER OUR LIVING LABS

Living Labs are user-centred, open innovation ecosystems, operating as close as possible to local stakeholders and target population groups.

ABOUT LIVING LABS

The Waste4Soil project aims at developing standardized solutions to help territories’ food system succeeding their transition towards more sustainability and circularity. However, local contexts are varied across Europe, and it is necessary to consider specificities to propose solutions useable by everyone.

To succeed in this goal, the Waste4Soil project strives to set up Living-Labs in the different EU regions, which will allow to have practical and concrete results, directly managed by the key actors of an area and suitable to various contexts. Therefore, the Waste4Soil project is developed through 7 Living-Labs located in several macro-regions: Nordic Baltic (Finland and Poland), Danube & Balkan States (Hungary and Slovenia), and Mediterranean (Greece, Italy, and Spain).

Living lab members – how does it work?

Each Living Lab will include all types of local food system actors, counting 10 to 20 active members, and a citizen panel of up to 200 consumers that will be consulted throughout the project.

Spain - Catalonia

Spain is a territory with low carbon content in soil and high nitrogen surplus. The Spanish Living Lab will focus on regional representatives’ food production: olive oil, wine, beer, and meat from pig industry.

Italy - Emilia Romagna

Activities will focus on the hydrolysis of proteins starting from 2 different feedstocks: food processing residues streams from animal protein source (poultry manufacturing) and food processing residues streams from vegetal protein source (soybean processing).

Slovenia - Istria

Olive-oil production and the associated industry are very important in southern European countries.

Due to climate change and new climatic conditions Slovenia can now become important oil producers.

Greece - Northern Greece

The Greek agriculture has two main challenges: the very high costs of energy and chemical fertilizers, and pollution of water and soil due to intensive and unreasonable use of chemical fertilizers. Also, soils are subject to a strong mineralization of organic matter and a degradation.

Hungary - Central Transdanubia

The Hungarian LL will focus on selected food processing residues (FPR) studying combinations between 1) cereal processing residuals, 2) meat industrial origin rendered animal by-product ( animal bone meals from ruminant), 3) fruit processing residues, 4) dairy processing waste, and 5) corn processing waste.

Finland - Päijät-Häme

The Finnish Living Lab will focus on two main food processing residues, grain and fish. It will be situated within the local “Grain Cluster” cooperation network, composed of 82 food companies and primary producers. The capital city of Päijät-Häme is predicted to become the centre of the food industry in Finland within next few years.

Poland - Mazovian and Lublin

Polish Living Lab will be carried out as “replicative” study, to test the possibilities, challenges, risks, and chances linked with the use of soil improver developed by Waste4Soil partners.