The first week of June was a very eventful and action packed one in Brussels, as the EU Green Week stretched across four days – brining all sorts of experts, innovators, practitioners, success stories, businesses and many others to a same spot and allowing them to discuss and exchange each other’s achievements, lessons learnt and future outlooks. CSSboost was there to follow the different CCRI related workshops and discussions in order to take advantage of the opportunity to enhance its existing and new synergies with fellow CCRI stakeholders.
The week, titled “Circular Solutions for a Competitive EU”, saw a rich programme with the European Commission’s DG Environment, European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform and the European Circular Cities and Regions Initiative contributing to it with different sessions reflecting the priorities, ongoing activities and frameworks that brought forward by each of them. On behalf of the CSSboost, Ernest Kovacs of ACR+ attended the day dedicate to insights on how to turn circular strategies into real-world solutions which included dedicated sessions on industrial symbiosis for circularity, scaling up best circular practices and similar.
The day which was of the most interest for what concerns CSSboost, was certainly the 4th CCRI workshop. The fact that the first phase of CCRI ends this year, this workshop had a double importance – connecting with peers and reflecting on the achievements made in the Thematic Working Groups and on the other side, help shaping the future of CCRI activities. A special focus and space with a clustered approach was also given to the CCRI Thematic Working Groups including the one CSSboost belongs to – the bioeconomy group, which were followed by a plenary moderated by Daniel Gehrt and Astrid Hannes of the CCRI Coordination Support Office to summarise and discuss policy recommendations for driving Europe’s circular transition. Deputy Director General at DG Research and Innovation, Astrid Ladefoged, was the one who closed the day with her wrap up and closing words.
After attending the workshop, Ernest said: “Being present at workshops like this, where all the attention is paid to various CCRI stakeholders – projects, pilots, fellows and others, helps me to understand how fellow CCRI projects are progressing, what are the challenges they are facing and what opportunities did they identify for scaling up their circular economy solutions. As far as I am concerned, I wanted to investigate as much as I could to what extent do fellow projects take social innovation and social acceptance as an important feature of such projects. What I came across was a diversity of approaches and methodologies – from focus groups to communities of practice and other inclusive and co-creation processes tailored to the various target groups – neighbours, consumers, businesses and others. I am happy to feature some of these at the upcoming CSSboost webinar on 23 June and to transfer these discoveries onto the CSSboost partners and pilot cases.