Project description
A sustainable future for the EU furniture industry
Transforming the existing linear economic model into one that is inherently circular presents a major societal challenge: preserving natural resources while simultaneously enhancing competitiveness, innovation and employment. In this context, the EU-funded FRANCESCA project aims to provide essential support in guiding the furniture industry toward greater circularity. The project will pioneer and promote innovative circular solutions that span the entire furniture life cycle, from pre-use to post-use. To achieve this, it will develop and implement key approaches that address material, business-model and design challenges, ultimately delivering a circular furniture design decision-support tool, a dedicated circular material selection framework and circular business models that foster sustainability and circularity across the industry.
Objective
FRANCESCA aims to provide crucial support to the EU furniture industry as it moves towards greater circularity. The project's primary objective is to pioneer innovative circular solutions for furniture, encompassing the whole funiture life cycle, including pre-use (from design to delivery), use (maintain, reuse, repair), and post-use (refurbish, repurpose, re-manufacture, re-distribute, and recycle).
FRANCESCA will develop and use enabling supporting solutions that address key design, materials, and business model challenges. Concretely, the project develops, tests and disseminates a circular furniture design decision support tool, bridging circular principles with market-based instruments (environmental certifications and standards); it investigates, scopes, and tests alternative biobased materials to accelerate closed-loop strategies by implementing a dedicated industrial symbiosis platform; it designs, prototypes and implements a set of complementary circular business models; develops circular ecosystem management guidance and integrate circular value creation mechanisms enabled by Digital Product Passports. These enabling tools feed a set of three Circular Demonstrators, each focusing on a key circular strategy (design, material innovation, and service business model). Sustainability assessements and environmental technology validation of the novel solutions demonstrate their sustainability potential at scale. Finally, learnings from the project are cristallised in a capacity building toolkit for life-long learning strategies and a set of policy recommendations that are disseminated at EU level.
The pragmatic, holistic and hand-on approach, steered by sectoral needs (manufacturers, retailers, CSOs) and supported by a complementary set of design, materials, business and sustainablity experts breaks down the systemic barriers to circular transition and reduces the circularity gap faced by the sector, thus creating long lasting sustainable impact.
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.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
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.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.6 - Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
MAIN PROGRAMME
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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.
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.
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-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL6-2024-CIRCBIO-01
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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.
30510 Yecla
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
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.