Territorial and Regional Demonstrations of Systemic Solutions of Key Value Chains and Their Replication to Deploy Circular Economy

TREASoURcE will innovatively circulate currently incinerated, exported, landfilled or dumped plastic and biobased side and waste streams by deploying systemic circular economy (CE) solutions. The systemic CE solutions will integrate the two main elements of TREASoURcE: stakeholder engagement demonstrations (SE-DEMOs) and key value chain demonstrations (KVC-DEMOs). The DEMOs support chosen territory clusters in introducing CE practices to their citizens and businesses to help 1) decouple from use of fossil virgin resources and excess raw material consumption, 2) increase resilience (self-sufficiency, value chain security, environment and nature), 3) decrease GHG emissions and contribute to achieve climate neutral economies. Climate change, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity are major global threats that require urgent collaborative actions across industry, sectors, cities and regions, communities and citizens. Half of total GHG emissions and more than 90 % of biodiversity loss come from resource extraction and processing. Global consumption of materials, especially biomass, fossil fuels, metals and minerals are expected to double by 2060 and annual waste generation is estimated to increase by 70 % by 2050. TREASoURcE focuses on demonstrating the CE solutions in cities and regions located in the Nordics (Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark), and they will be replicated in the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Poland and Germany (of the Baltic Sea Region). The combination of the cities and regions will enable large reach and bigger impact and boost the replicability and scalability potential of the CE solutions. A common issue of the regions’ material circulation is low and decentralised material volumes and resulting challenges in feasibility, and bottlenecks have been high risk investments due challenges in securing sufficient feedstock (quality and quantity). However, regional strengths lie in ambitious climate and environmental targets.