A new food waste treatment strategy for Europe

PlasCarb combines the production of high-value industrial materials with the treatment of unavoidable food waste.

Do you remember the question that was posed by Krisztina nearly three years ago, in her blog post? Is it possible to turn food waste into a resource?

This question kicked off the PlasCarb project on December 1^st, 2013, and since then our team, consisting of seven partner institutions from five EU Member States, has worked hard to answer this question with a well-grounded YES.

This dedication has paid off – with the end of the project on November 30^th, 2016, we can present a technology to the European market that has been proven viable through a one-month pilot test. In addition to that, social, environmental and economical assessments, carried out throughout the whole life span of the project, attest the sustainability of the entire PlasCarb value chain.

What can PlasCarb do for our economy?

Food waste is the feedstock of PlasCarb to generate in a first and well established step biogas (CH₄ & CO₂). After purification, the gas is cracked by a low temperature microwave plasma to yield graphitic carbon (renewable PlasCarbon) and renewable hydrogen.

PlasCarb is circular economy in action! Not only will this technology contribute to the recycling of food waste, but it also uses immanent components to source and supply industry sectors which are today mainly dependent on fossil fuels – the carbon nanoparticle market and the hydrogen economy.

Help spreading PlasCarb

PlasCarb is one of many initiatives to fight against the dangerous landfilling of food waste and to turn our wasteful and linear economy into a creative and circular one. If you are supporting those thoughts, please share the PlasCarb idea with your friends and colleagues. This will help making policy makers and businesses aware and multiply the positive effects of PlasCarb onto the European business landscape. Please visit and share this video where our partners tell the PlasCarb story in their own words. Our project website, http://www.plascarb.eu/, provides more information and the Viability Assessment encourages businesses to adopt the PlasCarb technology.

Back to the roots

Is it possible to turn food waste into a resource? Yes, PlasCarb has the potential to do so, but as Krisztina highlighted in her blog post, we are all in the responsibility to prevent the generation of food waste at its roots. Because it is not sensible to treat food waste which is avoidable with expensive technologies like recycling, composting or even with PlasCarb. Let us act in a more social, environmental and economical conscious manner by choosing sustainable technologies such as PlasCarb.

By: Daniel Frohnmaier

European Parliament elections: what path for EU funds?

What happened?

On 17th of January 2017, elections were held for the new president of the European Parliament in order to choose the successor of Martin Schulz (Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats). Initially seven candidates were running for the position, but before the first ballot, the liberal Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE) withdrew his candidacy, offering support to the Italian centre-right candidate Antonio Tajani (European People’s Party). After the third ballot, it became evident that the real competition was between two Italians, centre-right Antonio Tajani (EPP) and centre-left Gianni Pittella (S&D). At the end of the fourth ballot, with a difference of 69 votes, the presidency went finally to the EPP’s candidate Tajani. Despite the wind of Euroscepticism, the position of president of the European Parliament can be a very powerful and influent one, as Schultz showed in the previous five years unlike his predecessors. Tajani will draft the path to be followed concerning many outstanding issues for the next two and a half years.

After Tajani’s victory, it is indeed interesting to notice the prevalence of EPP’s members in key positions, with Jean-Claude Junker president of the European Commission and Donald Tusk as head of European Council.

Who is the newly elected president?

Antonio Tajani is a legal expert, former journalist and Italian politician. He is a familiar face in the EU politics as he was elected as Member of the Parliament four times. He has been vice-president of the EPP since 2008, and Commissioner for Transport from 2008 until 2010 and at a later time Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship. As a matter of fact, during 15 years of political activity dedicated to the EU, he was part of different committees and projects, so his experience in EU politics and policies implementation is indisputable.

What does it mean for EU research and innovation?

Tajani clearly stated his position towards R&D, innovation, SMEs and environmental problems, when he was running for the EP president. “We need to work in favour of the real economy, strengthen our SMEs, as well as our industries’’ he said in an interview for Euractiv.com. During his mandate as a Commissioner for Industry and SMEs, Tajani undoubtedly saw the benefits of EU research and advocated for boosting it. It could not have been otherwise, given his background. He served the European Commission under the Barroso presidency, which was a flourishing period for research and innovation projects as he covered the position of head of Industry and Entrepreneurship, while in the Parliament he was part of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.

Regarding the future of EU funding, he might have some changes in mind: “The EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme should be focused on fewer priorities, with more impact. Low carbon technologies, climate and the circular economy, as well as new digital and data technologies, should in my view be prioritised even more strongly than today,” he said to Science Business.com.

By: Cosmina Bisboaca

LinkTADs project successfully completed

October 2016 marked the completion of the LinkTADs project, a three-year initiative funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to coordinate European and Chinese research on animal health.

As a result of various LinkTADs activities, EU-China collaboration has intensified through increased networking of relevant scientific communities and stakeholders, trainings for EU and Chinese researchers and establishment of linkages between ongoing animal health research and innovation projects in both regions.

LinkTADs organized a number of events:

 – 11 technical workshops emphasized the importance of linking laboratory and epidemiology in the animal health research field and enabled establishment of the LinkTADs network of research institutions;

 – 6 short terms academic visits and 3 exchange programs were organized providing excellent opportunities for LinkTADs and external partners to visit each other’s laboratories and facilities, learn in-depth about the ongoing activities and research lines and define new paths for collaboration;

 – 5 trainings were delivered in close cooperation with existing training programmmes in the EU and China resulting in a compilation of training materials available on the LinkTADs website;

 – 7 webinars were broadcast throughout the course of the project covering mostly specific diseases or policy aspects. This modern tool was seen as a useful way to deliver talks by experts allowing a wide participation of stakeholders in the EU/China.

 – 2 policy meetings were organized bringing EU and Chinese policy makers together; additionally, recommendations were developed on the basis of identified gaps and synergies for further potential harmonization of relevant regulations in both regions.

 – 4 dissemination events were held in both the EU and China contributing to reaching project objectives and enhancing the project impact.

The LinkTADs networking graph below shows the established relations within the consortium and with external partners, thus demonstrating the project’s sustainability potential.

Successful project completion does not mean that the end of our work on the LinkTADs. Within the project, Europa Media was responsible for the platform development and we aim  to maintain the website as an information platform on cooperation in the animal health field between the EU and China for at least two years after the project completion. During the project implementation the platform was visited more than 10,000 times.

The platform includes several sections developed specifically within LinkTADs: collection of EU-China policy and strategy documents in animal health research collaboration; partner database, downloadable library of workshop reports, recorded webinars, training materials, and newsletters as well as the LinkTADs “Find Funding” tool.

The Funding database is an innovative tool, designed by Europa Media in order to help researchers look for available funding covering travel grants, scholarships, exchange programmes, fellowships available for European and Chinese experts working in the veterinary field including animal health and food safety. The LinkTADs partners decided to make it available for public users.

Thus, if you are an international researcher looking for funding opportunities in the field of animal health or food security, feel free to visit the LinkTADs website. The “Find funding” tool currently lists 180 entries collected by EM.

Additionally, Europa Media will be involved in maintaining the activities of the LinkTADs Focal Point Network. The Network consists of international researchers and experts from the EU and China with experience in animal health related research and relevant expertise in EU-China cooperation, e.g. funding, logistics, networking opportunities, etc. The LinkTADs Focal Point Network will provide support to anyone interested in animal health research and relevant cooperation between the EU and China. Europa Media will assist in sustaining the network using the LinkTADs LinkedIn group for communication.

Europa Media and the LinkTADs team encourage international epidemiologists, laboratory workers, PhD students and individual researchers active in the field of animal health and food security to make use of LinkTADs tools, which are available beyond the project completion as part of the LinkTADs sustainability plan.

LinkTADs team during the final project meeting

By: Liliya Levandovska

MY-WAY: Two years to help students to fulfil their entrepreneurial dreams

When the MY-WAY project was funded in 2014, the European landscape of youth entrepreneurship was highly fragmented: although many support initiatives existed, they did not coordinate their efforts, information was lacking and young European prospective entrepreneurs were necessarily limited to their local options when searching for information and support.

The idea of MY-WAY came from talks and confidence boosting speeches on how young adults should start and develop their businesses. Listening to young people’s challenges, it became clear that connecting the stakeholders of the web entrepreneurship ecosystem (mentors, accelerators, VCs, incubators etc.) with the student networks; connecting the students with business people and connecting the available platforms and initiatives across Europe had the potential of providing all actors with an added value and increase the effectiveness of the web entrepreneurship ecosystem.

From early 2015 until the end of 2016, ten organisations from eight European countries worked as a tight-knit team to bring student organisations supporting prospective entrepreneurs back into the centre stage of the ecosystem.

Our Israeli partner, Bar Ilan University, outlined a mapping methodology to lay out the most relevant actors for a young person wishing to launch a new business. By checking the MY-WAY map, you will be able to really understand the entrepreneurship environment not only around you, but throughout Europe, and you may find the missing piece of your business and directly contact a certain organisation, such as a co-working space, an accelerator, an investor, and alike.

Later on, our partners AEGEE (the European Students’ Forum) and NACUE (the National Association of College Universities Entrepreneurs) worked together to develop, carry out and later analyse online surveys and face-to-face interviews to young prospective entrepreneurs and student support centres. Through this endeavour, partners realised that students need to have closer contact and support from support centres, which should fill the gaps between the main actors in the field of entrepreneurship, including the ones providing information and guidance and encouraging young people to develop their ideas and support the fulfilment of their dreams. On the other hand, student support centres and student networks often face financial challenges and lack of proper working space, and have fragmented relationships with each other.

All partners then scouted their own ecosystem to find successful innovative collaboration agreements between a wide range of initiatives offering support to prospective entrepreneurs. Our Set of Best Practices showed that student networks can position themselves as key actors within the web entrepreneurship ecosystem if they are connected with other actors within the ecosystem, such as entrepreneurship networks, entrepreneurship centres, universities and organisations that provide financial support.

In order to facilitate novel connections and to give voice to the other side of the equation, AEGEE and Europa Media further organised two Stakeholder Meetings in Brussels, bringing together 30-40 people of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities working in the entrepreneurship field: mentors, accelerators, student networks, incubators, investors, student support centres, and much more.

As a good number of recommendations and novel ideas was shortlisted, it became high time to give back to the students: MY-WAY managed to reach out to more than 750 students in the occasion of 5 Student Enterprise Conferences organised in London (by NACUE and Capital Enterprise), Budapest (by YES and Europa Media), Lisbon (H-Farm and Europa Media), Tel Aviv (Bar Ilan University) and Treviso (H-Farm and Europa Media).

Through the participation of our rock-star mentor and coach David Trayford, of all our partners and city-specific organisations acting in the entrepreneurial field, the events were a unique opportunity for students to discuss various topics related to how to make their business idea become real, learn more about ongoing funding programmes and initiatives, to change the mindset of those who may lack confidence and overall to make entrepreneurship a more appealing career option.

As the project comes to an end, it is time to take stock of what has been achieved and reflect on how to continue this satisfactory work. It is fair to say that partners have worked hard and in harmony for two years, driven by a unique enthusiasm and passion for helping students with their business ideas.

Being part of the Startup Europe club has further increased our outreach potential: we have established new connections with ongoing projects and initiatives, created new collaboration agreements and programmes, raised awareness on the entrepreneurial lifestyle, trained students on crucial skills and boosted their self-confidence.

 By: Valentina Zuri & Krisztina Toth