NEWS: 1st Online Kick-off Meeting

On Friday, November 14, 2024, the 1st online kick-off meeting took place with all the partners of the Interreg IPA Adrion project named “Shaping new paths towards FUrniture circuLARity – FULAR”.

FULAR aims at enhancing the implementation of circular economy approaches to production processes in the furniture sector, raising awareness among the main sectoral actors in the Adriatic Ionian Region regarding sustainability, individuating alternative materials, technologies, and assembly techniques to foster circularity in wood-based industry. Prototyping of furniture items with the alternative materials previously selected is aimed at encouraging the use of the circular solutions.

FULAR has 3 working packages, as they described below:

WP1: Project partners will use joint methodology, which enables transnational comparison of the forestbased industries’ and consumers’ performances with the reference to the sustainability and circular economy concepts. The activities will enable FULAR partners to identify also the best cases SMEs that already implemented circular economy models to their production processes. The activities will lead to a clear picture of the state of the art of furniture companies in the Adriatic Ionian area as regards circular economy models’ implementation. The information collected will be used by the partners to develop a joint strategy with common goals and actions towards the enhancement of sustainable and circular solutions for the furniture sector

WP2: The purpose of WP2 is the identification of practical solutions based on circular materials and technologies, targeting transnational forest-based industries, development strategic guidelines through research, creation a manual for furniture companies, sharing it with sectoral actors in the Adriatic-Ionian area, helping SMEs adopt circular economy models, and serving as a reference for WP3 pilot actions.

WP3: The specific objective of WP3 is to demonstrate to the companies inside and outside the Programme Area the feasibility of greener items with the use of the materials and techniques identified during the project. To do so, the International Awards: green challenge for designers will be organised to involve students and designers in the preparation of eco-design project proposals starting from scientific results collected in WP2. The winning projects will be further developed during the Materials Engineering International Workshops, where 3 of the winning projects will be selected to be prototyped.

The FULAR project will last three years, and the partnership includes 10 partners from seven Mediterranean countries (Greece, Slovenia, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Albania, Serbia).