BIN2BEAN will support cities in their transition towards regenerative soil systems by promoting innovations for soil improvement from bio-waste with a value-based approach. The project will implement 3 Living Labs, as pilot city-regions, to follow a multi-actor and participative approach. In each LL, after mapping local contexts in terms of material and monetary flows, a tailored evaluation framework to demonstrate the safety, environmental and socio-economic performance of soil improvers will be co-designed and implemented, through field testing on experimental sites, feasibility studies and choice experiments. The data obtained will feed into a pilot scoring system, that will be co-developed and validated during the project, to help cities selecting the most effective solutions adapted to the geo-spatial context, i.e. inner city, urban-rural fringe and the wider market. The highest scored solutions will be selected for the development of innovative and tailored business models. The latter will match to stakeholders’ willingness-to-adopt (circular) implementation packages, e.g. collection schemes, cooperation networks, infrastructures and fee structures. The pre-market processes will be monitored through Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA). Finally, based on all previous results, local, national and EU policy roadmaps will be drafted, including waste charging policies and citizen awareness campaigns in the city-region, that will be piloted in LLs. All this will feed into a PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) approach, enabling cities to create a continuous value-based improvement loop towards regenerative soil systems. BIN2BEAN will support local waste management with the creation of 40 start-ups specialising in the soil improvers value chains. This will help to reach Europe's 2035 objectives of reducing landfill to 10% of total waste while reinjecting nearly 135,000 tonnes of nitrogen and 45,000 tonnes of phosphorus into soils in an environmental, human and sustainable way.

A shift towards a more circular economy is crucial to achieve more sustainable and inclusive growth. Our objective is to provide local and regional authorities with an innovative transdisciplinary open source geodesign decision support environment (GDSE) developed and implemented in living labs in six metropolitan areas. The GDSE allows creating integrated, place-based eco-innovative spatial development strategies aiming at a quantitative reduction of waste flows in the strategic interface of peri-urban areas. These strategies will promote the use of waste as a resource, thus support the on-going initiatives of the EC towards establishing a strong circular economy. The identification of such eco-innovative strategies will be based on the integration of life cycle thinking and geodesign to operationalise urban metabolism. Our approach differs from previous UM as we introduce a reversed material flow accounting to collect data accurate and detailed enough for the design of a variety of solutions to place-based challenges. The developed impact and decision models allow quantification and validation of alternative solution paths and therefore promote sustainable urban development built on near-field synergies between the built and natural environments. This will be achieved by quantifying and tracking essential resource flows, mapping and quantification of negative and positive effects of present and future resource flows, and the determination of a set of indicators to inform decision makers concerning the optimization of (re-)use of resources. The GDSE will be open source. With a budget of €5 million, REPAiR funds a consortium rich in experience in waste and resource management, spatial decision support, territorial governance, spatial planning and urban design, and has deep knowledge of the 6 case study areas. REPAiR is supported by a user board, of key stakeholders for the development of CE as well as local authorities, who are heavily involved in the GDSE testing.

The overall objective is to minimise the leakage of materials from the linear economy and work towards a circular economy. Specific objectives are to: • Engage cities, enterprises, citizens and academia in 16 participatory value chain based partnerships to create and develop eco-innovative solutions together. • Develop 10 viable end-markets by demonstrating new applications for plastic waste, metals (EEE devices), biowaste and wood waste. • Develop a governance model for cities based on value chain based partnerships. • Develop decision support tools and assess the actual impact by use of Big Data. • Ensure replication through the FORCE Academy aiming at enterprises, citizens and policy makers. The eco-innovative solutions will be demonstrated across four cities (Copenhagen, Hamburg, Lisbon and Genoa) and using the four materials: Flexible plastics: Recycling and upgrade of 5,000 tonnes of flexible plastic from enterprises and private households will enable virgin material substitution, corresponding to preventing emissions of 12,500 tonnes of CO2. Metals: Citizens will be mobilised to reclaim an additional 2 kg/capita of WEEE (app. 3,600 tonnes). A communication campaign will reach 100,000 citizens and support at least five SME’s that repair damaged EEE devices so that 10-20% of the collected WEEE can be redistributed. Wood waste: additional 12,000 tonnes wood waste from urban and mountain areas will be collected. 8-10,000 tonnes of brushwood will be used for compost production, and 14-16,000 tonnes will be processed into wood particles. Biowaste: around 7,000 tonnes of biowaste from the municipal mixed waste stream will be recovered: 3,000 tonnes coming from restaurants and hotels, and 4,000 tonnes coming from households. The partnerships will result in the creation of viable eco-innovative market solutions, exploited by the partners. Replication in other cities will be incentivised thus ensuring competitiveness of European Circular Economy and green growth.