Food choices do not end at the supermarket. What happens at home, how we store food, prepare meals, and organise our eating routines, plays a crucial role in shaping healthier and more sustainable food systems.
The next SPOON Citizen Science Labs (CSLs) invite citizens across six European countries to explore their everyday food practices and help co-create digital tools for healthier and more sustainable food systems.
Following two successful rounds of Citizen Science Labs, the SPOON project is launching a third round across six European countries (Valencia, Spain; Bruges, Belgium, Braunschweig, Germany, Pomurje Region, Slovenia; Turn, Italy and Thessaloniki, Greece).
Coordinated by the CSCP, the CSLs bring together citizens as active contributors and co-researchers to better understand everyday food practices and co-create solutions that reflect real-life experiences.
Get to shape our SPOON Digital Toolset
The upcoming labs focus on the next stage of the food consumption journey: storing, preparing, and eating food. Participants will explore how food routines are shaped by household organisation, available resources, cultural practices, local food environments, and everyday challenges.
Key to this lab iteration will be to further develop and start with the first operational use of the SPOON Digital Toolset. Building on previous citizen feedback, participants will test and refine the digital questionnaire, Dashboard, and Personal Data Wallet under real-life conditions. By contributing their experiences and feedback, citizens will help improve the usability, accessibility, transparency, and trustworthiness of the tools while enabling the first collection of citizen-generated data and supporting the development of future solutions for understanding food behaviours across Europe.
Find your local CSCL and join us now!
Are you interested in contributing to this citizen-driven journey? Connect with the SPOON Citizen Science Lab in your country and become part of the European community shaping the future of sustainable food systems.
Find your local CSL and get involved!
To find out more about the Citizen Science Labs and opportunities for collaboration, please contact Francesca Grossi.
For further information, please reach out to Arlind Xhelili.
Image: © HBK Braunschweig
Urban resilience is not about bouncing back when things go wrong, argues Dr. Esther Heidbüchel, CSCP Senior Project Manager. Read how she thinks circular approaches can help cities to better respond, adapt and transform as conditions change.
Cities are facing climate change, resource shortages, and geopolitical uncertainty. How can circular economy help cities become more resilient?
Circular economy requires cities to know their critical value streams and have strong collaborative networks in place. These are prerequisites for maintaining economic and social ‘normalcy’ in crisis situations.
By localising resource loops for water, food, energy and materials, circular cities reduce dependence on fragile global supply chains and create buffers against geopolitical shocks and price volatility.
By exploiting waste streams, keeping products and materials in use, they lower exposure to resource shortages while creating alternative revenue streams from recovered nutrients, secondary raw materials and shared assets.
Digital tools that not only map, but are capable to steer urban material and energy flows, further improve early warning and adaptive management during extreme weather or infrastructure failures.
Finally, circular strategies such as industrial symbiosis, repair and reuse economies, and nature-based solutions can diversify urban functions and reduce dependence on single systems. This creates greater flexibility: when one system is disrupted, others can help compensate.
Combined with strong stakeholder networks and a sense of community, this flexibility enables circular cities not only to recover from disruptions, but also to adapt and move towards more sustainable and equitable urban models.
How can cities become resilient while at the same time staying just and inclusive?
A city is not resilient if it is not just and inclusive. A city becomes resilient only by embedding equity and justice into every step of urban planning and implementation. This means prioritising investments in neighborhoods that are most vulnerable to impacts of natural disasters and economic hardship, ensuring that climate adaptation measures such as green infrastructure, flood protection and cooling strategies support equity.
Participatory governance is essential: residents, community organisations, businesses of all sizes and marginalised groups should be involved in defining priorities, co-designing solutions, support implementation and monitoring outcomes.
A just transition also requires targeted social policies: affordable housing mandates, accessible public transport, skills training for green jobs and financial support for low-income households to retrofit buildings or adopt circular practices. By linking circular economy strategies (repair hubs, community composting and material reuse centres) to local employment and social inclusion goals, cities can create shared benefits while reducing environmental pressures.
What is one common misconception about resilient infrastructures on an urban level that you would like to challenge?
A key misconception is that urban resilience is mainly a fixed status. It’s not about focusing on robustness only against, for example, heavy rainfalls, floods, storms, or sabotage; instead, it is about adaptivity and response capacity.
A narrow, engineering-style view risks treating resilience as simply “bouncing back” after a shock, rather than building the capacity to anticipate, absorb, adapt and transform under changing conditions. In practice, this can lead to investments in ever higher walls or bigger drainage systems while ignoring systemic vulnerabilities such as land-use patterns, social inequalities or dependencies on fragile supply chains.
A more useful framing considers resilient infrastructure as part of a socio-nature-technical system that remains functional and fair in most plausible futures. That means designing for flexibility and redundancy, using nature-based solutions alongside technical measures, and embedding participatory processes so that adaptation pathways reflect local knowledge and diverse needs. When cities plan for adaptivity instead of only robustness, they turn resilience from a defensive concept into a driver of sustainable urban innovation.
Join Dr. Esther Heidbüchel at the Online Conference of the Circular Week 2026. Register here to secure your spot!
To explore the full Circular Week 2026 programme, please visit the dedicated page.
For all other questions, please contact Nils Kreft.
How can Europe accelerate the transition towards alternative proteins that are not only innovative and scalable, but also accepted and integrated into everyday diets? This question will be at the heart of “Beyond the Bite: Science, Scale and Acceptance of Alternative Proteins,” our LIKE-A-PRO project final event taking place on 1 October 2026 in San Sebastián, Spain.
The event will bring together experts and stakeholders from across the alternative protein ecosystem to explore the intersection of science, product development, regulation, food environments and consumer adoption.
In the session “Food environments, consumer behaviour and market adoption,” Arlind Xhelili, Project Manager at the CSCP, will share insights on how behavioural patterns, consumer perspectives and decision contexts can help create the conditions for alternative proteins to move beyond niche adoption.
What can we learn about making alternative proteins easier to choose?
Evidence from LIKE-A-PRO’s behavioural intervention pilots across Europe offers an important takeaway: changing consumer behaviour is not simply about persuading people to make different choices—it is about creating the conditions that make those choices easier and more appealing.
At Beyond the Bite, the CSCP will bring these insights into a wider discussion on what it takes to translate evidence into action and support the mainstreaming of alternative proteins across Europe.
Event: Beyond the Bite, Like-a-Pro final conference Date: 1 October 2026 Place: San Sebastián, Spain Cost: Free of charge Language: English
Learn more about Beyond the Bite and register for the event here.
For further questions on the Like-a-Pro project and to engage with us on alternative proteins, please reach out to Arlind Xhelili.
Imagine a medium-sized enterprise (SME) in Germany’s Bergisch city triangle facing multiple simultaneous challenges: soaring raw material prices, fractured supply chains, and increasing client demands for data on product circularity.
This is exactly where the project bergisch.kompetenz steps in. Supporting real actors on the ground to address a vital question: How can the Circular Economy become a competitive advantage and resilience strategy for regional SMEs?
To bring this transformation to life, the project is hosting a landmark event in autumn 2026.
Save the Date: The bergisch.kompetenz Congress 2026
Mark your calendars for a day of inspiration, networking, and actionable business strategies:
Date & Time: September 24, 2026 | 09:00 – 16:00 Location: University of Wuppertal, Germany (Building K) Cost: Free of charge Language: German
Under the motto “Region in Transition – Shaping a Circular Economy Together”, the congress brings together participants from industry, craft, science, and politics. Instead of academic keynotes, the focus will be on economic viability and practical solutions.
You can look forward to interactive workshops, a dynamic Gallery Walk featuring real corporate use cases, funding overviews, and hands-on toolkits.
Moving from theory to practice with CSCP
As a project partner, the CSCP is focused on supporting companies to bridge the gap between sustainability and profitability through targeted, hands-on support:
“The application areas for Bauer & Böcker’s products developed together with the CSCP have opened up new perspectives for product and business model innovation. The results clearly demonstrate the potential of systematically identifying and developing new fields of application.”, says Katja Gehrt from Bauer & Böcker, a manufacturing company based in Remscheid, Germany.
Your opportunity: Join the movement for free!
Numerous pioneering companies in the region are already on board, transforming their operations and reaping the benefits of resource independence.
Your business can be next—and there is no need to wait until the congress. While the project is running, interested SMEs can access all bergisch.kompetenz offers free of charge!
Start your journey today with our quick-response Quick-Check: we will assess your company’s circular optimisation potential and, if suitable, launch a tailored Use Case to future-proof your operations.
Reach out to Michael Mühlenbein to get started now!
To be part of the congress, register here!
Cities are places where massive flows of materials are concentrated, yet circular models still lose out to linear ones. Could Digital Product Passports (DPPs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) bring about change at scale?
Where we stand today
Options like repairing, sharing, reusing and refurbishing often lose out to buying new on price, convenience, and scale. Also, too often we focus on how to manage waste better instead of looking into how to make circular business models work before products become waste.
For any product, component or material, the key questions should be: Can it be reused? Is it worth repairing? Should it be refurbished, separated for parts, or recycled?
Each option carries different costs, revenues, risks and impacts. The technical and commercial viability underpinning circular business models is anything but a given — exceptions prove the rule. One reason these models often remain weak is information: value chain actors rarely know enough about a used product’s condition, material composition, history or remaining value to act with confidence.
How Digital Product Passport could change the game?
Digital Product Passports are designed to help close that gap. A DPP records what a product is made of, how it can be repaired and what has happened to it over its life — making this information available not only to the first buyer, but also to repairers, recyclers, future owners and other relevant actors. It makes a physical object easier to assess, price, warrant, finance or procure. In doing so, DPPs can support better circular decisions upstream of waste management.
How does AI fit into the picture
Artificial intelligence becomes useful when such product information can be analysed at scale. AI can help estimate residual value, predict failure risks, identify missing information, match recovered parts with demand, compare repair with replacement, or route products to qualified repair, refurbishment or recycling actors. Its value lies in reducing uncertainty where circular decisions are too complex, fragmented or time-consuming to make manually. But AI cannot compensate for missing, poor-quality or inaccessible data.
Bringing AI and DPPs together at the Circular Week 2026
The combination of AI and DPPs may well change the economics of circular business models. Better information reduces the cost of finding, checking and matching used items, makes remaining value easier to price, and supports models such as repair-as-a-service, refurbishment contracts, reuse procurement or second-hand marketplaces.
But this process is not only about a technological fix. Digital and technological advancements are an important piece of the circularity puzzle, but their impact depends on complementary action in governance, regulation, financing, secondary markets, and incentives for durability, reuse and repair.
“This is where cities can play an enabling role. Through procurement, permits, infrastructure, local partnerships and shared data spaces, they can help create the conditions in which circular services become viable.”, says Arne von Hofe, CSCP Senior Expert
Cities can also convene the actors needed to make these models work, from municipal utilities and repair networks to producers, logistics providers, businesses and neutral data platforms.
Join us to make things happen on the ground!
The hardest obstacles are rarely technical alone. Where product data changes decisions, and where local partners build viable markets around those decisions, AI and DPPs could open real opportunities for circular business model innovation in cities.
This is the kind of question we want to explore in practice with you at our dedicated session hosted by the CSCP and the CircularTechForum at the Circular Week in October 2026. Please indicate your interest to join by filling out this form.
Get in touch with Arne von Hofe for all additional questions!
What if cities became the places where Europe’s circular economy ambitions turn into everyday reality? And what can we learn from those already leading the way?
We will explore these questions at the Online Conference of the Circular Week 2026 on 27 October 2026 together with policymakers, businesses, researchers, and civil society organisations from across Europe. Let’s shape solutions together—register now!
Register here!
As a highlight of the Circular Week 2026, the Online Conference offers a focused, practical and relevant platform for those working to move circular economy ideas from strategy to implementation.
It is designed for stakeholders who want more than inspiration: participants will gain insights, examples, contacts and fresh perspectives on how circular solutions can be applied in cities and regions.
What’s the context?
Europe’s circular economy agenda is advancing rapidly, shaped by initiatives such as the Ecodesign, Right to Repair, Extended Producer Responsibility, and the forthcoming Circular Economy Act. But policy alone does not create change. Cities and regions are places where new models are tested, partnerships are built, citizens are engaged, and circular solutions become visible in daily life.
That’s why tour Circular Week 2026 Online Conference focuses on the local and regional level: the place where ambition meets action.
Agenda highlights
The conference will open with a high-level policy discussion on: How can policy enable diverse stakeholders at the city level to advance the circular economy? City mayors and community representatives will discuss what is needed to create the right conditions for circular innovation, implementation, and collaboration.
Following the opening session, participants can shape their own conference journey through five thematic tracks, each hosted by experts and practitioners working directly on the challenges and opportunities of circular transformation.
Resilience and Infrastructure
This track explores how the circular economy can help cities build that capacity. From circular heating and regional material cycles to renewable energy, bioeconomy and resilient communities, the sessions look at practical ways to reduce dependencies and create systems that can adapt when circumstances change.
Your hosts: Dr. Esther Heidbüchel, CSCP Senior Project Manager and Alexander Mannweiler, Head of Sustainable Business and Entrepreneurship at the CSCP
Regulate, Repair, Redesign
What conditions do we need to put in place to create a repair- and circular economy society? This track looks at the political framework and market structures that influence business decisions, as well as the places, services and networks that make repairing, reusing and sharing a natural part of everyday life
Your hosts: Michael Kuhndt, CSCP Executive Director and Stephan Schaller, CSCP Senior Expert
Engaging citizens
This track explores what it takes to put people at the heart of the circular transition. From the way products and services are offered to the role of digital tools, education, logistics and local initiatives, it looks at how we can remove barriers and create everyday opportunities for people to act.
Your hosts: Rosa Strube, Head of Sustainable Lifestyles at the CSCP and Nils Kreft, CSCP Project Coordinator
Circular Economy Future Skills
This track explores what people and organisations need to become truly circular-ready. It looks at how skills can be developed across entire regions, how cities can respond to growing workforce shortages, and how organisations can create the conditions for innovation and collaboration. At the same time, digital tools, AI and data can open up new possibilities, but only when people have the knowledge and confidence to use them effectively.
Your hosts: Marc Böker, CSCP Senior Expert and Janna Prager, CSCP Project Manager
Levers for Circular Cities
This track explores how cities and regions can build the conditions for circular transformation to take root and scale. It looks beyond individual measures to the systems that enable them: the governance structures, financing mechanisms, procurement practices, partnerships and organisational capabilities that can turn circular ambitions into tangible impact.
Your hosts: Cristina Fedato, Head of Sustainable Infrastructure, Products and Services at the CSCP and Mike Tabel, CSCP Project Manager
Tailor your experience
The format is flexible by design. Participants can choose the sessions most relevant to their work, whether they are looking for policy insight, implementation know-how, project inspiration, partnership opportunities or concrete examples from across Europe.
Who is it for?
The event is especially relevant for municipalities and municipal companies, businesses and start-ups, policymakers, networks, researchers, civil society organisations and circular economy practitioners seeking credible insights and impact-oriented exchange. The conference will be held in German and English.
Be an active part of the Online Conference
Our online conference programme is currently being finalised. If you’d like to contribute as a speaker or join us as a session partner, please reach out to Mike Tabel!
To explore the full conference programme and register, please go here.
(Click on the image to see the full Circular Week 2026 programme in German)
For further questions, please get in touch with Nils Kreft.
Cities and regions across Europe face similar challenges when implementing the circular transition. Over the past year, practitioners shared real-life experiences—what worked, what didn’t, and where they saw real potential—through peer exchange in the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) Communities of Practice.
The just launched CCRI hands-on online workshops build directly on that practitioner exchange.
Each workshop focuses on a key implementation challenge identified in the CCRI communities of practice and translates those insights into practical tools, methods and examples participants can apply in their own context.
Upcoming sessions include cutting consumption-based emissions through circular economy or the role of municipal waste companies in the circular transition.
The CSCP will host the workshop on the role of municipal waste companies as part of the upcoming Circular Week in October 2026, with a growing number of city actors from Germany and across Europe.
Event: Hands-On Workshop “How Municipal Waste Companies Can Drive the Circular Transition” Date: 28 October 2026 Time: 10:00-11:30 CET Place: Online Language: English Cost: Free of charge
Discover the sessions and more information here: CCRI hands-on online workshop series: from ambition to action | Circular Cities and Regions Initiative.
To join the event, please register here.
For all further questions, please contact Dr. Shirin Betzler.
What if thousands of people across an entire region came together to repair instead of replace? What if a broken toaster, a torn jacket, or a damaged bicycle became part of a collective movement showing that repair is alive and well? In October 2026, the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) will aim to break the record for the most repaired items in a month!
What will happen?
Throughout October 2026, citizens, repair initiatives, Fab Labs, craftspeople, businesses, manufacturers, retailers, and community organisations across NRW will join forces in an ambitious attempt to achieve the highest number of repaired items ever documented within a single month.
The initiative is part of the Circular Week 2026, co-hosted by the CSCP and INNOWO and is coordinated by FAB Region, a regional circular economy project in which the CSCP is a project partner.
“Our research identified an inspiring benchmark: in 2024, the UK-wide “Big Fix” campaign documented 3,177 successful repairs within one month. Together, NRW aims to surpass that achievement by reaching more than 4,000 repaired items. But this effort is about far more than numbers.”, says Stephan Schaller, CSCP Senior Expert who has been working on the topic for over a decade.
What we want to achieve
The record attempt aims to demonstrate a simple but powerful message: repair is big, diverse, and once again a real option. Every repaired item extends product lifetimes, conserves valuable resources, reduces waste, and helps build practical skills and stronger communities.
“Current political developments like the Right to Repair or Ecodesign directives give us a big boost towards finally turning our back on throw-away-culture and towards a real repair society. With this world record attempt and the Repair & Share Festival in Wuppertal we want to shine a bright light on the incredible power of community to come together and embrace this change in thinking and, ultimately, behaviour.”, shares Nils Kreft, CSCP Communication Coordinator.
Who can join?
Participation is open to everyone. Whether you are part of a repair café, a crafts business, a specialist workshop, a retailer, a manufacturer, a local initiative, a network, or simply someone with a screwdriver and a willingness to help, there are many ways to get involved.
What can be repaired?
Repairs can include electronics, household appliances, bicycles, textiles, furniture, and many other everyday products.
Throughout the month, successful repairs can be documented via an online platform in just a few clicks. Participants will be able to share their repair stories, upload photos of repaired items, and even enter prize draws for attractive rewards and vouchers.
Repair & Share Festival on 31 October 2026
The initiative will culminate on 31 October 2026 with the Repair & Share Festival in Wuppertal, a vibrant public celebration of repair, reuse, sharing, and circular creativity. Alongside repair activities, visitors can expect opportunities to exchange clothing, learn new skills, meet local repair experts, and connect with others who believe that keeping products in use matters.
Many repair initiatives from across NRW have already committed to participating, and a growing number of companies are exploring ways to contribute through repair services, sponsorship, communication activities, or hands-on engagement.
Interested in becoming part of the movement? Get in touch with Stephan Schaller!
What if repairing products became the default rather than the exception? How can a single day demonstrate what this could look like in practice? How many products could be given a second life in just one day? This will be at the heart of our Repair & Share Festival 2026 in Wuppertal, Germany, the flagship closing event of our FAB Region project.
The festival will bring repair and second-hand practices closer to everyday life and showcase how circular consumption can become an attractive and viable alternative to buying new.
The festival marks the closing event of Circular Week 2026, creating a strong link between regional action and broader discussions on circular economy transformation. It will provide a platform to explore a key question: What does it take for repair and second-hand to become the “new normal”?
A festival for circular solutions
The event will bring together stakeholders from civil society, voluntary initiatives, and the private sector to collaboratively pilot a Repair Hub and foster synergies between grassroots repair initiatives and professional repair businesses. Through a diverse and engaging programme—including a second-hand fashion show, interactive activities for all age groups, and hands-on repair experiences—the festival aims to make circular practices tangible, social, and empowering.
Join the repair movement—and a world record attempt
A central highlight will be a world record attempt for the most repaired items in a single day—read more about this topic on the FAB Region website!
Visitors will be able to actively contribute by bringing and repairing a wide range of items, from electronics, bicycles, and furniture to clothing and everyday household goods.
The festival explicitly invites both individuals and organisations to take part: whether by repairing an item on-site, sharing expertise, or engaging in collaboration around the new EU directives on Ecodesign and the Right to Repair. By opening participation to a broad audience, we look forward demonstrating the collective impact of repair at scale.
Interested in participating with your organisation? Get in touch with Stephan Schaller!
More than repair
In addition to the official programme, food trucks and informal gathering spaces will make for a welcoming festival atmosphere—get ready to be inspired, exchange, and engage!
Event: FAB Festival Repair & Share Date: 31 October 2026 Place: Wuppertal, Germany Language: German and English Cost: Free of charge
The Repair & Share Festival represents both a culmination and a starting point: concluding the FAB Region project phase while laying the groundwork for future circular initiatives in the region and beyond.
Don’t miss it & reach out to Nils Kreft to engage with us!
Algae-based products can contribute to healthier diets, sustainable materials, and sustainable innovations. Yet, despite these advantages, they remain rather unfamiliar and under-adopted. Join our AlgaeProBANOS summer school 2026 and learn how to co-create sustainable products, increase their market acceptance, and creatively showcase their benefits to the wider public!
In the AlgaeProBANOS project, the CSCP supports algae entrepreneurs in increasing the market acceptance of their products by co-creating their sustainability storylines and supporting the exhibiting of their products.
Starting from June 2026, you will have the unique opportunity to join the AlgaeProBanos online summer school to deepen your skills on sustainable innovation, co-creative product development and consumer and stakeholder engagement!
What’s in it?
Together with the AlgaeProBanos partners we have put together algae knowledge and insights from the project and created a 4-week online summer school:
The summer school is designed for aspiring and active algae and blue entrepreneurs, students and researchers in blue bioeconomy disciplines (including biotechnology, marine sectors and business).
The importance of consumer acceptance
As part of the project, we recently published a report on influencing factors on consumer acceptance of algae-based food, feed, cosmetics, textiles, nutraceuticals and bio-stimulants.
What we found: While health and sustainability are strong motivators, novelty, unfamiliarity, and accessibility are key barriers. Targeting health-conscious, innovative, and eco-conscious segments, and ensuring clear communication and consumer engagement, is essential to scale adoption across sectors. Would you like to learn more? Read the full report here!
Methods to foster co-creation
Beyond understanding why consumer acceptance and engagement matters, concrete formats and structured processes are needed to involve relevant actors effectively. In sustainable product development—particularly in emerging fields such as algae-based innovation—co-creation extends beyond consumers.
It also involves entrepreneurs, value chain partners, and external stakeholders who influence feasibility, positioning, and market uptake. Each group brings different perspectives: strategic, technical, regulatory, or experiential.
In the AlgaePro BANOS project, the CSCP implemented several practical formats to engage both stakeholders and end-users. At the summer school you will learn about our three-stage co-creation journey, leading you from ideation to experimentation to validation. You will also get exclusive access to our “Sustainable Product Guidebook” for algae entrepreneurs.
How creative formats increase acceptance
The CSCP hosted a successful first algae exhibition in Berlin in 2025, to showcase algae’s potential for sustainable product development. This and other creative formats will be presented to you to discuss with your peers and develop your own engagement strategy.
As part of the AlgaeProBANOS project, the CSCP also researched factors influencing consumer acceptance of algae-based products in 6 different product groups and published a report.
To join our AlgaeProBANOS Summer School, please register here.
For further questions, please contact Carla Schmid.
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