Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CARE (CARE - Circular consumption Activities to tRansform households toward material Efficiency)
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30
CARE is an Innovation Action Project, which aims to empower consumer-citizens in European households in the transition to a circular economy (CE). The objective of CARE is to transform a total of 100 households in five European countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Estonia) to circular model households.
In CARE, two pilots are developed in co-creation with citizens, non-governmental and civil society organizations, municipalities, researchers and CCR regions to facilitate the transformation of households to circularity. One of the pilots is related to food and one to clothing. Both of these material flows represent critical areas for change in consumption from the point of view of their environmental effects. Both CARE pilots consist of two different key parts: interventions and advisory services. In the pilots, households are engaged in changing their everyday practices with the aim to reduce food waste (in the food pilot) and to achieve more sustainable clothing practices (in the clothing pilot). The interventions target the areas of food purchasing and planning, cooking and storing as well as clothes’ washing, repair and redesign, and planning a sustainable wardrobe. In addition, households will receive customized advisory services to support the changes they make in their everyday life. The CARE pilots will be tested and validated in five regions - both urban and rural - that are part of the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI): Tampere, Asker, Gothenburg, Berlin, and Lääne-Harju. Impact assessment is a key part of the project. CARE will assess the improvement in material efficiency, living conditions, and sustainable wellbeing of participating households. At the end of the project, the effectiveness of the pilots for reducing environmental impacts will be calculated using life cycle assessment, especially the Product Environmental Footprint method.
CARE will make a strong contribution towards accelerating fair, inclusive and sustainable consumer-based transition to CE. Furthermore, CARE will ensure the replicability and multiplication of its results through easy-to-use communication and dissemination tools, in collaboration with CCRI and other European circular economy initiatives.
In CARE, two pilots are developed in co-creation with citizens, non-governmental and civil society organizations, municipalities, researchers and CCR regions to facilitate the transformation of households to circularity. One of the pilots is related to food and one to clothing. Both of these material flows represent critical areas for change in consumption from the point of view of their environmental effects. Both CARE pilots consist of two different key parts: interventions and advisory services. In the pilots, households are engaged in changing their everyday practices with the aim to reduce food waste (in the food pilot) and to achieve more sustainable clothing practices (in the clothing pilot). The interventions target the areas of food purchasing and planning, cooking and storing as well as clothes’ washing, repair and redesign, and planning a sustainable wardrobe. In addition, households will receive customized advisory services to support the changes they make in their everyday life. The CARE pilots will be tested and validated in five regions - both urban and rural - that are part of the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI): Tampere, Asker, Gothenburg, Berlin, and Lääne-Harju. Impact assessment is a key part of the project. CARE will assess the improvement in material efficiency, living conditions, and sustainable wellbeing of participating households. At the end of the project, the effectiveness of the pilots for reducing environmental impacts will be calculated using life cycle assessment, especially the Product Environmental Footprint method.
CARE will make a strong contribution towards accelerating fair, inclusive and sustainable consumer-based transition to CE. Furthermore, CARE will ensure the replicability and multiplication of its results through easy-to-use communication and dissemination tools, in collaboration with CCRI and other European circular economy initiatives.
During the first 18 months, the CARE project has focused on co-creating the CARE pilots including design for advisory services and a plan for the interventions. To support this work, a review of previous interventions has been made, several workshops have been held with different stakeholder including citizens. The local implementation of the pilots has also been designed, taking into account local infrastructures, cultures and previous experiences of partners. Furthermore, the basis for assessing the impact of the pilots has been created through an assessment method and data collection protocol (including environmental and sustainable wellbeing assessment) that started by reviewing current state-of-the-art knowledge on the topic. As one of the key activities, recruitment of households to the pilots has been completed successfully.
The first key results of the project have been achieved. The assessment method and data collection protocol designed in CARE can potentially be used by other research and innovation projects as well as by various stakeholders in assessing the impact of interventions targeting households.