<< Objectives >>The E-Waste project aims to increase awareness about the problem of electronic waste at schools and connect it to the makerspace approach in education. There is a lack of curriculum integration of relevant STEAM contents related to EWaste and circular economy that prevents these topics to be addressed in classrooms. We aim to provide opportunities for quality digital education, especially to schools working with more disadvantaged communities.<< Implementation >>1. We will create local workshops and learning dynamics together with an extended group of local schools that will focus on disadvantaged students and teachers.2. We will seek to empower school communities by acting on the digital capacitation of teachers and incentivizing the creation of schools' makerspaces.3. We will create an Elearning course about Ewaste with the purpose of providing free access to creative and relevant circular economy practices and that can be applied in the classroom<< Results >>1. A repository of Ewaste practical activities and an e-learning course composed of video tutorials, guidelines, and quizzes will be available for school use.2. We will provide pedagogical frameworks and guidelines to ensure a more clear understanding to the teachers of how to implement such an approach in their daily practice and curriculum.3. The open-source policy will enable the democratization of access to high-quality education in relevant topics for disadvantaged school communities.

<< Objectives >>The project aims to develop, pilot and demonstrate an open source program that introduces circular economy (model of production and consumption, involving sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling materials and products as long as possible) and maker movement (cultural trend that places value on an individual's ability to be a creator as well as a consumer of things) as a tool that can be used by youth workers to bring wellbeing to youth with mental health conditions.<< Implementation >>Through participatory action based co-design with the target groups we will develop the program, including guidelines, tutorials and training curriculum. Through collaborative pilot testing we will review the practical applicability of the program in a real context and with a group of youths. In the final demonstration and dissemination activity we will challenge the content in various contexts and share the final outcomes in dissemination events.<< Results >>The result is a robust and holistic program centered around circular economy and maker movement, offered in open source and open access ways, that allows youth to address global challenges through local activities. The intention is to enable organizations, youth centers and youth workers working with young people with mental health to implement it in their regular activities with the end goal to bring a sense of achievement and wellbeing to their beneficiaries.

Management of food waste (FW) and petroleum plastics pollution are two significant global challenges. Developing biopolymers and added-value bioplastic products from low-grade FW is, thus, a key enabler to tackle both issues. Despite extensive R&D efforts to valorise waste streams including FW to bioplastics, the widespread market penetration of bioplastics is hindered due to their high production cost. BioLaMer aims to demonstrate a novel proof of principle fly larvae biorefinery by establishing food eating black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) as a high impact feedstock for cost-effective production of two biopolymers, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) and chitosan. The advantages of the larvae route are that it: i) is renewable and inexpensive; ii) provides less complexity as the larvae has invariable chemical composition; iii) can be used to mitigate the FW problem; iv) can reduce raw material inputs, thus minimizing energy utilization; v) doesn’t disturb the biodiversity; and vi) can avoid/reduce pre-treatment costs associated with the waste-streams to produce the platform chemicals for biopolymer production. The innovative BioLaMer biorefinery will improve the bioreactor process efficiency and cut down the PHA production cost significantly compared to existing technologies. BioLaMer will combine its conceptual innovations, complementary interdisciplinary expertise and bioreactor process expertise to develop cost-effective PHA and chitosan production technologies, supported by life cycle thinking/analysis and hybrid models developed using machine learning platform. Further, the significant environmental, economic, and societal impacts (that supports the EU Circular Economy, Green Deal, Food Waste, and Plastic strategies/initiatives) of BioLaMer will be demonstrated through the involvement of SSH, communication and circularity demonstration partners.