On October 24, our Founder and Managing Director, Maria Catalán, participated in the kick-off meeting organized in Brussels for the LIAISE Cost Action. Maria is member of the Management Committee for this project, representing Luxembourg. 

A COST Action is an interdisciplinary research network that brings researchers and innovators together to investigate a topic. COST Actions are typically made up of researchers from academia, SMEs, public institutions, and other relevant organizations or interested parties.

The LIAISE Cost Action has brought together 33 countries in pursuit of a shared vision for a sustainable future. The project will be implemented during upcoming 4 years. 

With the industrial sectors being one of the most responsible for carbon dioxide emissions, energy use and waste production, the implementation of a Circular Economy strategy is critical to combating climate change by steering away from the linear economy and its sustainable production and consumption while simultaneously balancing three dimensions: society, environment, and economy.

On a practical level, Industrial Symbiosis (IS), understood as the process by which waste or by‐products of an industry or industrial process become the raw materials for another, has been identified as a promising enabling solution for improving environmental sustainability while simultaneously achieving economic benefits.

However, despite its potential, a lack of awareness is still observed in companies and industrial actors. In addition, IS development is still hampered by environmental, economic, technical, regulatory, organisational, social, and cultural barriers.

Thus, the LIAISE COST Action aims to ensure an inclusive and holistic IS approach by generating relevant synergies among different actors from the q-helix stakeholders model and by setting the groundwork for increased and robust development of knowledge, apart from promoting future results-oriented R&D.

LIAISE will, therefore, establish a link between theory and practice, develop a participatory and practice-oriented approach to support cross-sector and cross-cycle collaborations, and establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for assessing the implementation of the IS business model in the industry. To this end, the excellence of this network will be developed and implemented by three cross-cutting thematic interdisciplinary Working Groups (WGs), further aggregated and exploited through a transversal WG (Dissemination and Exploitation).

Expected results:

1. Promotion of the transfer of technology and knowledge on IS between the different actors.
2. Promotion of contact and collaboration networks between the different actors.
3. Supporting young researchers in their active participation in research related to Industrial Symbiosis.
4. Promotion of Industrial Symbiosis among industrial actors, especially SMEs.
5. Identifying, understanding and overcoming.
6. Promotion of training on Industrial Symbiosis and other circular models.

More information: info@planinlux.lu