Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Turning food waste into sustainable soil improvers for better soil health and improved food systems

Project description

Ready to reshape the future of food waste management

The food industry’s waste output is taking a toll. Mountains of food processing residues, once discarded, contribute to pollution and soil degradation. The EU-funded Waste4Soil project will pioneer 10 solutions to transform these residues into local, bio-based circular soil enhancers. It will introduce a standardised evaluation framework, empowering stakeholders across the food value chain to assess their progress in achieving circularity with food processing residues. Seven Soil Health Living Labs will be established across Europe, in Greece, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Finland, to explore the potential of eight different types of food processing residues. The project will also establish an advanced management platform for data analytics and Internet of things device integration.

Objective

Waste4Soil envisions the development of 10 technological and methodological solutions for recycling food processing residues from the food industry into local, biobased circular soil improvers for improved soil health. A user-driven standardised Evaluation Framework will support stakeholders from the food value chain, including waste managers, to assess their status towards food processing residues circularity and take action for recycling suitable waste streams into beneficial soil improvers. To ensure co-innovation and collaborative research, Waste4Soil will setup 7 Soil Health Living Labs across Europe, in Greece, Finland, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia, to study the valorisation of 8 types of food processing residues (i.e. meat, fish, dairy, cereals, olive oil, beverages (wine), fruits and vegetables, and processed food). The project focuses on assessing and improving the effectiveness of existing routes of food waste management to soil improver components, formulation and application methods by focusing on:
1) Anaerobic digestion residues by employing novel nutrient separation including Selective Electrodialysis, bio-electrochemical and membrane systems
2) Novel efficient Biochar production from food processing wastes and digestates
3) BioPhosphate processing
4) Effective composting process of solid residues
5) Protein hydrolysates acting as soil improvers and AD-Microalgae combined processes for soil biostimulants
and
6) An enabling management platform applied in all living labs, with a growing database of data analytics, route optimisation applications, soil health evaluations and application recipe’s, commercial aspects, and the capacity to use IoT devices in logistics.
The 27 partners and 1 associated partner supporting this project proposal are forming a transdisciplinary partnership accross 10 European countries.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MISS-2022-SOIL-01

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 919 062,50
Address
CHARILAOU THERMI ROAD 6 KM
57 001 THERMI THESSALONIKI
Greece

See on map

Region
Βόρεια Ελλάδα Κεντρική Μακεδονία Θεσσαλονίκη
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 919 062,50

Participants (26)

Partners (1)

My booklet 0 0