| Posted November 26, 2025

Rural Leadership in Action: How European and Chinese Partners Are Collaborating for Sustainable Innovation

How can rural communities drive innovations to increase sustainability? In October 2025, the CSCP joined European and Chinese partners in Xiamen, China for the launch the NEXRUR project, which aims to o-develop business models that are next generation and community led. The goal: to empower farmers and rural stakeholders across Europe and China to build resilience and drive greener local economies. NEXRUR’s main objective is to explore innovation dynamics and strategies for change in rural areas in the Europe and China. The project enables farmers and their communities to develop, select, and scale next-generation sustainable, community-led business models and monitor their […]

| Posted November 25, 2025

The CSCP Launches the iCOSHINE Platform to Advance Soil Health Collaboration

Around 60% of EU soils are considered unhealthy, threatening our food and water security, biodiversity, and climate resilience. Boosting and scaling hands-on innovations will be essential to addressing this challenge. To enhance knowledge sharing and accelerate innovation, the CSCP, together with its consortium partners from iCOSHELLs, launched iCOSHINE, a Europe-wide platform that provides spaces (both online and in person) for practitioners to exchange knowledge, challenges, and good practices. The goal is to promote continuous learning and collaboration across Soil Health Living Labs, enabling the identification of synergies and trade-offs at both the lab and solution levels from a broad, Europe-wide perspective. […]

| Posted November 24, 2025

Democracy as the Backbone of Sustainability: Insights from Our CSCP Team Day 2025

In times of increasing polarisation, shifting power dynamics, and accelerating digital change, the links between democracy and sustainability are being tested more than ever. At the CSCP, we believe that tackling these complex challenges begins with dialogue—connecting across perspectives, challenging our own assumptions, and building bridges where gaps exist. CSCP Team Day: An Open Space for Discussion At this year’s CSCP Team Day in Wuppertal, more than 50 team members joined a dynamic fishbowl discussion on emerging social and political trends shaping our work. Guest speakers, Mr. Helge Lindh, Member of the German Parliament (SPD), and Ms. Selly Wane, entrepreneur and […]

| Posted November 23, 2025

Cutting Food Waste Together: Action Tips from Across the Value Chain

Food waste is one of the drivers of greenhouse gas emissions, resource loss, and ecosystem strain. Tackling it is complex and often challenging, but when each part of the food system takes action, the collective impact can be transformative. At the CSCP, we’ve been working on food waste reduction for years—from a voluntary agreement in retail to co-creation in schools, from behaviour change to digital innovation. Across EU-funded projects and multi-stakeholder dialogues, we’ve seen one thing clearly: everyone has a role to play, and each action matters! To make these actions—and the roles different actors can play—more tangible, we launched a social […]

| Posted November 13, 2025

Driving Circular Cities Forward: The CSCP at the European Week of Regions and Cities 2025

Hundreds of experts, city representatives, and pioneers gathered for in-depth exchanges on the future of circular cities at the European Week of Regions and Cities hosted in October 2025 in Brussels, Belgium. CSCP’s Dr. Shirin Betzler and Dr. Johannes Klement contributed by sharing our experiences and insights on circular cities and regions and by engaging with peers on how we can collectively accelerate progress toward more sustainable urban futures. The event was a marathon of ideas: three days packed with seminars, high-level panels, and networking on a shared commitment to drive circular economy in cities at the European Week of Regions […]

| Posted November 12, 2025

Discover Our 8-Step Approach to Integrating Social Norms into Food Waste Interventions

How do social norms shape our everyday decisions about food waste? The EU-funded project, CHORIZO set out to understand the role of social norms in food loss and waste (FLW). While the project did not test norm-shifting interventions in the field, it achieved something both concrete and useful: it identified which norms matter in different contexts and built this understanding into a practical design process that practitioners can start using right away. The EU wastes over 58 million tonnes of food every year—that’s about 130 kilograms per person. Reducing this waste is one of the quickest ways for Europe to cut […]

| Posted November 6, 2025

From Status Quo to Innovation: The CSCP Brings the Conversation to ANUGA 2025!

Imagine enjoying a juicy steak made without harming animals or cutting down forests. At this year’s ANUGA fair, the CSCP showed how European farmers and scientists are joining forces to make cultivated meat (meat grown from animal cells) an option for everyone’s plate, through an open and inclusive process that values diverse perspectives and considerations. At ANUGA 2025 in Cologne, Germany the world’s largest trade fair for food innovation, the audience was invited to rethink what “meat” could mean in the future. Under the keynote title “Can You Imagine a Future Where This Is Possible?”, Alexander Mannweiler, Head of Sustainable Business […]

| Posted November 4, 2025

Our SETDEPLOY Project Kicks-Off: Enabling Europe’s Clean Energy Transition

Citizens across Europe are feeling the change due to higher energy bills and from more frequent heatwaves and floods. A faster shift to clean energy, produced locally where possible, can help lower bills over time, create local jobs, and help make communities healthier and more resilient. To deliver on these needs, the EU has launched the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan. But how can this plan become a true engine for change? That’s where the SETDEPLOY project comes in. Launched in September 2025 in Gothenburg, Sweden, SETDEPLOY brings policy, industry, and research to the table to turn strategy into practical next […]

| Posted November 3, 2025

Meet us at the Smart City Forum in Wuppertal on 13 November 2025!

Smart cities hold the promise of making urban life more sustainable, efficient, and responsive by using data and digital technologies to improve everything from mobility and energy to health and waste management. However, technology alone doesn’t make a city smart. Real progress depends on strong collaboration between citizens, government, academia, and business, as well as open data, transparent governance, and digital inclusion. In 2022, the Smart City Wuppertal initiative was launched to drive Wuppertal’s digital transformation by connecting ideas, people, and innovation across the city. After three years of work, the initiative is about to start implementing three core projects: Smart […]

| Posted October 30, 2025

From Engagement to Policy: CEE2ACT’s Role in Shaping the Future of Bioeconomy

How can we build momentum and ignite action for a sustainable, circular bioeconomy through inclusive and solution-oriented stakeholder engagement formats? The CEE2ACT project has been running bioeconomy hubs in ten Central and Eastern European countries, which serve as collaborative platforms where policymakers, businesses, researchers, and civil society come together to shape bioeconomy strategies. Recent milestones, including an impact evaluation and contributions to the European Green Week 2025, highlight how engagement is driving action. As the CEE2ACT project moves toward its conclusion in December 2025, successful stakeholder engagement is one of its achievements. Since its launch in 2022, the project has supported […]

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