Local stakeholders discuss the potential impact of forestry waste management in Pazardzhik

How to support decision-making to improve the management of forestry waste? This was the question that local stakeholders of the Province of Pazardzhik discussed during the third Local Living Lab that brought together several public local administrations, energy agencies, NGOs, and SMEs associations.

Discussions focused on two main topics that reflected the progress made by the project: how environmental impact assessment, and especially Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), could support policy development in the area of waste management, and how the upcoming webtool developed by Biocircularcities partner List could guide decision-making. The key results of the LCA by Biocircularcities partner ENEA assessing the potential impact of a better management of forestry residues in the Province were presented. Overall, participants found the results useful to move forward, and indicated that any environmental project requiring significant investment must be assessed in such manner, especially when introducing new technologies.

Participants also discussed the upcoming webtool, whose purpose is to guide with the choice of technologies to implement circular bioeconomy strategies. They found such tool interesting to access more information and perspectives on the different potential value-chain and welcomed its creation, considering that technological barriers were mentioned as one key challenge for the valorisation of biowaste.

The discussions will greatly contribute to improve the work of the project and help the consortium in understanding how the outcomes of the project can be truly useful to local players. Besides, the different local authorities that encompass significant forest stocks found the outcomes of the LCA analysis interesting to move forward with their sustainable management.