Society is increasingly familiarized with recycling and the importance of responsible consumption of certain materials. Nevertheless, lots of people are still unaware of the great benefits that these actions cause directly in the environment.
In order to understand this, we need to talk about circular economy which aim it is to minimize the production of materials as much as possible by implementing a resource use system. This would be achieved if we consider the reuse of those materials that cannot be returned to the environment. That is to say, circular economy advocates the use of biodegradable materials that do not harm the environment, once their useful life comes to an end. In this way, the linear economic model would be transformed into circular economy.
In other words, linear economy would go from “produce, use and dispose” to “reduce, reuse and recycle”.
The circular economy applied to rural areas entails the enlargement of the horizons of democratic sustainability against the climate change. The rural areas possess a great variety of ecosystems and resources that today’s society needs and demands (water, food, energy, raw materials, etc.), this is why the productive model of rural areas serves as an impulse for all those sectors linked to the production system.
Therefore, LIVERUR was created with the aim of identifying new business models and innovative ecosystems (“Living Labs”) which are being developed in rural areas. The task of this project consists in making a socio-economic analysis in order to localize, describe and compare the differences between the new approach of Living Labs and the traditional approaches at European level. The expansion of these new business models in different rural areas will allow to seize the resources in a responsible and committed manner with the environment.
