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Systemic Innovations Towards a Zero Food Waste Supply Chain

Project description

Innovation for reduced food loss and waste

World hunger is on the rise, yet a third of all food produced globally goes to waste. The EU-funded ZeroW project aims to provide significant contributions to preventing and reducing food waste and enhancing the sustainability of food supply chains. Specifically, ZeroW will carry out the demonstration of diverse innovations in nine real-life food chains, employing a systemic innovation approach to effectively address the multidimensional issue of food waste. Moreover, the project will justify how scaling up the results of the demonstrated innovations, and combining them with appropriate policies, can bring us closer to the Green Deal’s 2030 food waste reduction goals.

Objective

ZeroW has set the ambitious target of playing a key role in the transition of current food systems towards halving Food Loss & Waste (FLW) by 2030 and reaching near-zero FLW by 2050.

ZeroW provides significant impacts through the demonstration of innovations in nine real-life food chains, by employing a systemic innovation approach, to effectively address the multidimensional issue of FLW. This involves:
(i) pre-identifying systemic innovations, that incorporate multiple interlinked dimensions (process, organisational, strategy, marketing, product, technological, governance, etc.), which are tested and demonstrated;
(ii) steering the evolution of innovations towards higher levels of systemic readiness and impact, using a Living Lab co-creation and multi-actor collective learning approach;
(iii) enhancing the Living Lab actors’ innovation advancement capability with shared resources facilitating new ways and means of cooperating and co-developing innovations;
(iv) developing context-specific trajectories for the systemic innovations (from ideation to scaling-up and commercialisation) leading to the provision of currently missing end products and services that align with consumer attitudes, food actor needs and policy trends.

Moreover, ZeroW establishes a clear ‘FLW impact trajectory’, from demonstrator results (2025), scaled up to meet the F2F 2030 goals, and steered through a ‘just transition pathway’ towards a near-zero FLW in 2050.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

IA - Innovation action

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) H2020-LC-GD-2020

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Coordinator

INNOVATION COMMERCIAL PATHWAYS COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE
Net EU contribution
€ 845 455,00
Address
Ardeevin House, 3 Beaufort Park, Beaufort
V93 T045 KILLARNEY
Ireland
SME
Yes
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 1 088 080,00

Participants (50)