This article forms part of a series of publications under SIRCLES project, where we present projects related to ours around the Mediterranean (“sister projects”). We always aim to join forces, find synergies and make a change all together!

The series of SIRCLES sister project presentations goes on… This time we are proud to present you FOODRUS initiative funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Under the EU Project to create resilient food systems across 9 regions coordinated by the University of Deusto and comprising 29 partners from 10 different European countries, FOODRUS, sister project of SIRCLES, aims to limit food losses and waste, and to promote resource efficiency across all stages of the agri-food value chain.

FOODRUS is a newly launched project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and is looking to tackle these challenges by creating resilient food systems across nine European regions. To achieve this, the project will test 23 circular solutions through diverse forms of collaborative innovation, including technological innovation (blockchain solutions to manage food losses and waste), social innovation (educational materials and citizen science activities to promote sustainable consumption habits), innovation organizational (last mile networks to foster local consumption and donation), and fiscal innovation (new ‘Pay As You Throw’ schemes).

These innovative solutions will empower and engage all actors in local food systems, from farmers to end-consumers and everyone in between, to build a multi-actor alliance to tackle the challenge of food loss and waste. To promote the replicability of the tested solutions, FOODRUS will also prepare best practice toolkits and will involve six European regions as ‘Followers’: Valencia in Spain, Cluj-Napoca in Romania, Budapest in Hungary, Linz in Austria, Plovdiv in Bulgaria and Halandri in Greece (with the help of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), SIRCLES project’s partner in Greece).

FOODRUS is testing these solutions across three pilot projects in Spain, Denmark and Slovakia.

Follow the project progress on LinkedIn and Twitter.