How to expand the update of bio-based products?
New businesses and traditional ones adapted to the new times, thrived by the bloom of the bioeconomy, brings many opportunities for improving the partnerships between bio-based industries, brand owners and consumers. However, with the opportunities there are also many challenges that need to be faced and solved, in order to allow the sustainable bio-based market to flourish.
There are many ingenious and innovative ideas for creating bio-based products coming from different sectors, that have the potential for improving the collaboration between actors in the bioeconomy. In this scenario, stimulating the consumers perception and acceptability towards bio-based products, can have a direct impact on incrementing the offer of such products from the brands, and consequently increasing the demand of bio-based resources from the industry.
To support countries where bio-based business sector is less mature or not developed, like the case of Slovakia that imports more bio-based products than is using rather than developing its local resources, the following recommendations have been identified.
- Universities around Europe and the world could contribute to the awareness of the importance of bio-based products by holding more educational lectures, including not only students but also the wide public.
- To contribute to a wider exposure, bio-based sector should put more effort into communication which could represent "louder" advertisements in media, especially by focusing on success stories and examples of real bio-based products out there, outlining that they are in line with sustainability, environmental and climate goals.
- Recognising the environmental values associated with bio-based products can also be supported by standardised certification, so that people can easily recognise bio-based products.
- There are several bioeconomy strategies at different levels European, national and in some cases also regional, but there is a lack in concrete implementation plans of these strategies. The development of a common bioeconomy narrative could effectively support this process.
- There is a general need to help SMEs to overcome operational stress and a capacity shortage with respect to innovation as well as a stronger integration into emerging transnational and global value chains, what would also be supported by enhancing a better level of dialogue and cooperation among all the actors in the quadruple helix.
All the ideas and recommendations for boosting bio-based economy presented above are widely discussed in several documents developed by Biobridges project, which summarise the outputs collected from several co-creation workshops all around Europe.
Access to these documents below:
- Recommendations to enhance collaboration among industry, brand owners and consumers (CLICK HERE)
- Proceedings from EU, national and regional co-creation events and policy debates (CLICK HERE)
Author: Robert Miskuf (PEDAL Consulting)