Territorial and Regional Demonstrations of Systemic Solutions of Key Value Chains and their Replication to Deploy Circular Economy
TREASoURcE deals with implementing circular economy practices for plastics, electic-vehicle batteries and biobased side and waste streams to take the participating regions and their citizens to the forefront of climate neutrality and circularity.
TREASoURcE territories share together an important natural ecosystem, the Baltic Sea, which is subject to unnecessary logistics (e.g. plastic waste is exported and shipped due to lacking waste management infrastructure). Proper management of biobased side and waste streams and circulating nutrients is important to protect the Baltic Sea from eutrophication, which is a major environmental issue in the marine ecosystem.
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 circular economy (CE) solutions in cities and regions located in the Nordics (Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark), which 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.
Objective
TREASoURcE aims to initiate systemic change by developing CE solutions in cities and regions for currently underutilised or unused plastic waste, end-of-life electric vehicle batteries and bio-based waste and side streams (especially in agriculture and forestry). Implementing these solutions together with companies, societies (including citizens, consumers, communities and regional actors) and experts in the field is expected to significantly increase product and material circulation in the Nordic and Baltic Sea Regions.
More specific goals are the following:
- Demonstrated environmental, social, economic, and political impacts of the systemic CE solutions in the Nordics.
- Replicated locally tailored systemic CE solutions in the Baltics, Poland and beyond.
- Inclusive and just transition to CE for all supported by high level cooperation with all relevant stakeholders.
Duration and partners
Duration: June 2022 to May 2026
Partners: TREASoURcE is coordinated by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. The consortium consists of 17 partners from 7 European countries. More information HERE
Funding
Funding source: EU Horizon Europe; Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) programm
Budget: 10 933 545 € (total costs); 995 239.50 € (grant amount)
FinEst Centre’s share is 304 250 €
Sustainability and Responsibility
TREASoURcE focuses on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction throughout the whole project, tackling streams that are currently not circulated and producing added value materials and products for new loops. The focus is especially in urban-rural regions, since it is common that these streams could be circulated but they are produced in a decentralized manner. GHG emissions will be reduced throughout the project activities and further in widespread exploitation of the project demonstrations and other practices. TREASoURcE pilots will formulate new value chains and business opportunities reaching through the urban-rural settings. In addition, the project will demonstrate at least 8 new circular business models that will be disseminated to primary producers (agriculture) and CE entrepreneurs (reuse, refurbishment) who can exploit the new business opportunities.
TREASoURcE will innovatively circulate currently incinerated, exported, landfilled or dumped plastic and biobased side and waste streams by deploying systemic 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.
The role of FinEst Centre for Smart Cities
FinEst Centre for Smart Cities is participating actively in most of the Work Packages. To be more precise, we work in WP1 on the analysis of regulations, strategies and action plans to further enhance CE. In WP2 FinEst Centre contributes to understanding the key stakeholders’ roles via mapping Estonian and Baltic stakeholders and participating in “enlightened consumer demo”. Most of our work effort is concentrated on WP6, which focuses on exploitation, replication and transferable practices. Under this WP FinEst Centre will lead the task 6.2 “Identification of the transferable practices”, and in addition will participate widely in all replication activities in WP6.
