How can we successfully transition to a sustainable bioeconomy—in a way that ensures bio-based value chains are truly circular? This is the central question of a new research project that is collaborating with companies to design pathways for transformation.
The transition to a sustainable bioeconomy is a stated goal of national and international sustainability strategies. The aim is to replace fossil-based raw materials with bio-based alternatives and reduce environmental impacts. In practice, however, bioeconomic approaches are often not consistently linked to the principles of the circular economy. Aspects such as circular product design, long-lasting usage concepts, or viable solutions for the end of the raw materials’ life cycle are often overlooked. This is where the new research project CoDe – Co-Design for Circular Bioeconomy, led by the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), comes in.
The circular bioeconomy is considered key to sustainable production and consumption patterns. It relies on renewable raw materials such as wood, plants, or organic waste instead of fossil resources, thereby offering several advantages: Recycling bio-based materials conserves resources, reduces waste, and releases fewer greenhouse gases. At the same time, avoiding combustible raw materials such as petroleum increases the economy’s resilience to crises and price fluctuations in global commodity markets.
When bio-based raw materials are used, reused, or recycled for as long as possible, value creation increases—especially when using agricultural, food production, or forestry residues that would otherwise be lost. The combination of the bioeconomy and the circular economy thus offers great potential for sustainable production—provided it is conceived and implemented holistically. However, many (research) questions remain unanswered on the path to achieving this.
Thinking Ahead on the Bioeconomy: Closing the Loop for Resource-Efficient Production
Beyond technological considerations regarding how the two areas of transformation—the bioeconomy and the circular economy—can be effectively linked, questions arise regarding the social, economic, and institutional conditions necessary for successful transformation processes. How can new forms of collaboration in these fields succeed? What do appropriate regulatory frameworks look like?The “CoDe” research team (ISOE, Provadis, Uni Kassel and IKK at LUH) is addressing these questions together with stakeholders from academia and industry.
The project is anchored in the regional innovation network BioBall in the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main metropolitan region. Here, research institutions, companies, and other practitioners work closely together to drive sustainable innovation—it is precisely this collaboration that makes BioBall the ideal research environment for CoDe. In so-called co-design labs, solutions are jointly developed for the product development and design process that systematically integrate circular principles into bio-based value chains.
A key outcome of the project will be a starter kit that combines proven practical knowledge on prototypes, business models, and value chains with concrete descriptions of established formats for transformative innovation—so that other regions and networks can build directly upon it.
Research for and on Transformation Processes
A distinctive feature of the CoDe research project is the integration of two complementary research perspectives: On the one hand, the researchers focus on research for transformation by collaborating with industry partners to develop concrete solutions for circular value creation. On the other hand, they conduct research on transformations by systematically examining and reflecting on the processes, dynamics, and success factors of transdisciplinary collaboration in the co-design labs.
This dual perspective enables the research team not only to achieve application-oriented results for a specific sustainability problem. It also gains fundamental scientific insights into transformation processes and how they can be shaped. In this way, CoDe contributes to the further development of transdisciplinary sustainability research while simultaneously strengthening its practical effectiveness.
CoDe – Co-Design for a Circular Bioeconomy
The project “CoDe – Co-Design for a Circular Bioeconomy: Transformative Action Pathways for Circular Innovation in the Bioeconomy” is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) as part of the funding call “Challenges and Success Factors of the Transformation to a Circular Bioeconomy,” Module II (thematic funding) of the “Bioeconomy as Social Change” initiative.
More about the project and its research and practice partners: https://www.isoe.de/en/project/code-co-design-for-a-circular-bioeconomy
Contact at IKK
Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Spierling
spierling@ikk.uni-hannover.de
+49 511 762 13303
Marina Mudersbach
mudersbach@ikk.uni-hannover.de
+49 511 762 13431
