BIOBRIDGES

BIOBRIDGES aimed at boosting the marketability of bio-based products (BBPs) by establishing close cooperation and partnership between bio-based industries, brand owners and consumers’ representatives. The ultimate goal was to stimulate and support the active engagement and interaction among all stakeholders (including local communities and local authorities) and improve market acceptance of BBPs.

BIOBRIDGES designed and implemented replicable methodologies, procedures and good practices supporting multistakeholders’ interaction, leading to new cross-sector partnerships. Its main activities were to:

• Identify the cooperation challenges among consumers, brand owners and bio-based industries;
• Create a sustainable multi-stakeholder community involving consumer representatives, bio-based industries and brand owners from different bio-based economy clusters and stimulate dialogue and cooperation;
• Follow a co-creation approach, increase consumers’ and brand owners’ awareness, confidence and trust about the benefits of BBPs compared to their fossil-based counterparts;
• Support the establishment of at least 2 new cross-cutting interconnections in bio-based economy clusters and define replicable procedures and good practices leading to the establishment of new cross-sector partnerships and business opportunities;
• Stimulate the multi-stakeholder discussion toward pre- and co-normative research, new standardisation/labelling and emerging co-creation models (B2B and B2C).

At the end of the project, at least 2 new cross-sector interconnections in bio-based economy cluster were established, while the foundations for the creation of new ones based on the arguments, best practices and recommendations deriving from the project were formed.

The BIOBRIDGES consortium merged a variety of complementary expertise, aiming to build a consistent multi-actor approach integrating 9 partners already involved in other projects like BIOWAYS, BIOVOICES and BIOSTEP.