Guidelines for achieving circularity in regional value chains
A roadmap for building circular value chains
Regions are key players in the transition to a circular economy and can strongly support the creation of new local and cross-regional circular economy value chains with critical mass. Metabolic worked with the Dutch province of Friesland on one of the core work packages within the SCREEN project, focusing on identifying local circular economy potential value chains and cross-regional synergies.
- Client: European Commission
- Partners: Province of Friesland & other SCREEN partners
- Date: September 2018
The Synergistic CirculaR Economy across European regioNs (SCREEN) Consortium of 17 regions (including Friesland in the Netherlands) belonging to 12 European Countries aimed to analyse regional value chains and identify potential cross-regional synergies that could spark circularity and innovation, as part of a Horizon 2020 project.
Metabolic produced a complete guideline for the regions and a suite of tools to perform the analyses and stakeholder workshops. These were developed through six steps,from initial mapping of the value chain, to development of a roadmap with interventions and further to the identification and evaluation of respectively hotspots and emerging ideas that will eventually synthesise into cross-regional synergies.
A range of cross-regional synergies were developed. One example involved spectral analysis technology being developed at Scotland’s Rural College that makes it possible to immediately analyze the nutritional value and water content of milk. This could be used to identify dairy farms that would benefit the most from dehydrating the milk via a process being developed in Friesland, allowing farmers to dehydrate the milk to save money on transportation and refrigeration, and potentially be used for more high-value products such as milk-powder.
“The ultimate goal is to stimulate intra-regional collaborations around the circular economy, by systematically investigating the possible connections and complementarities between different sectors and value chains. By doing this we allow regions to scale up their work and, by being part of this consortium, they can more easily access essential stimulus funding through the Horizon 2020 programme and the European Structural and Investment Funds.”
Gerard Roemers, Metabolic Senior Consultant
Director of Product – Metabolic Software
ANY QUESTIONS?
For more information about this project, please get in touch.