Lessons on sustainable solutions from the Waste FEW ULL project by Jana Fried, Adina Paytan and Waste FEW ULL project participants
Waste occurs across food, energy, and water systems. At the interface of these systems, waste increases significantly the over-consumption of our limited resources. Resource scarcity is not only a matter of efficiency, but of access, distribution, and equality. Understanding different pressures and opportunities in distinct urban contexts is important for identifying processes by which cities can identify, test and scale viable and feasible solutions that reduce the most pressing inefficiencies in each context.
The WASTE FEW ULL project established four Urban Living Labs (ULLs) of stakeholders to a) map resource flows b) identify critical dysfunctional linear pathways c) determine the response most appropriate to the local context d) model the market and non-market economic value of each intervention and e) make suggestions to close each loop.
The project will contribute with policy decision support models for economically viable waste reduction, rethinking waste as a resource as well as establish entrepreneurship networks in each ULL to continue working on the project.
