Transition Regions towards Industrial Symbiosis

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Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is a building block of the Circular Economy, a means to sustainable growth increasing resource efficiency and SMEs competitiveness and resiliency (COM(2014) 398 final/2). Despite the acknowledged advantages, IS is not yet fully widespread. The challenge TRIS is facing is to enable a systemic uptake of IS in 5 European regions, supporting policy makers to increase the competitiveness of their SMEs by introducing IS practices. To do so, the TRIS consortium will: -Identify facilitating elements and obstacles and embed them in (or remove them from) the appropriate policy instruments. -Reach out and engage with the actors that can drive and/or be impacted by the change and involve them in structured local networks. Starting from the knowledge already achieved within the Climate-KIC initiative, TRIS will benefit greatly from interregional cooperation, given the diversity in terms of geography, productive system and maturity of IS practices: the City of Birmingham, project leader, is the most advanced, Hungary and Emilia-Romagna regions have already tested pilot projects, while Småland och Öarna and Valencia regions have approached the topic more recently. Industrial Symbiosis Ltd will play both an advisory and dissemination role, acting as a bridge between the consortium and the European perspective. TRIS is determined to cause the following CHANGES and accomplish the following RESULTS: -Raising awareness on the concepts of IS and its economic and environmental benefits -Causing a mind-shift and building a cooperation culture in the stakeholder groups (including SMEs and policy actors) -Standardize IS practices into regional policy instruments -Launching tangible initiatives in the regions: reaching out to more SMEs, supporting their business with new IS cases/projects, preventing industrial waste production, testing new governance models. -Bringing IS to a higher position in the European political agenda.

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