23 Partners from 10 Countries and 8 Lighthouse Cities/Regions to Deploy Circular Bioeconomy Solutions for Making Innovative Bio-Based Products
HOOP is about investing in local initiatives to extract valuable resources from urban biowaste and wastewater in order to make innovative bio-based products. Advancing Europe’s circular economy agenda, as a main pillar of the European Green Deal, HOOP will provide direct Project Development Assistance (PDA) to municipalities so they can build their administrative, technical, economic, financial and legal expertise. This project will help enhance the return on investments by reusing resources, creating jobs, and developing local bioeconomy capacity.
HOOP is an EU-funded Horizon project that brings together 23 partners from 10 countries and 8 lighthouse cities and regions from a variety of geographies around Europe, including close to 2.5 million people together from: Kuopio (Finland), Bergen (Norway), Almere (The Netherlands), Albano-Lazio (Italy), Porto (Portugal), Region of Western Macedonia (Greece), Murcia (Spain), and Münster (Germany).
HOOP will help boost investments at municipal levels and help build the capacity of local actors to contribute to Europe’s bioeconomy, thereby contributing to the triple bottom-line of sustainability: what is good for the environment is good for society and great for business!
Gemma Castejón, HOOP Coordinator from CETENMA
HOOP will work closely with municipalities to identify and boost investments in bioeconomy initiatives that can valorise the so-called Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW) and Urban Waste Water Sludge (UWWS). The valuable resources from these biowaste streams will be used to make bio-based products, such as: bio-based chemicals, bioplastics, biofertilizers, biopesticides, biopolymers, biorefineries, proteins and lipids
HOOP will engage the 4 segments of the “quadruple helix”: industry, science, civil society and policy. We will improve Europe’s urban metabolism by demonstrating circular economy solutions for other cities to emulate, thus replicating the HOOP model and contributing to the circular economy. And a HOOP Urban Circular Bioeconomy Hub will bring together the results in an open-source online platform to foster knowledge exchange with other cities across Europe and beyond.
About HOOP
Coordinated by Centro Technológico de la Energia y del Medio Ambiente (CETENMA) in Cartagena (Murcia), Spain, HOOP (Hub of circular cities bOOsting Platform to foster investments for the valorisation of urban biowaste and wastewater) is a four-year project that has received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement #101000836. HOOP includes 23 partners from 10 European countries, including 8 ‘lighthouse’ cities/regions with an estimated total population of close to 2.5 million inhabitants.