Bio4HUMAN’s Final Event

Advancing Sustainable Waste Management in Humanitarian Settings: Bio4HUMAN Final Event 

Prague, 28 May 2026 — The Bio4HUMAN project held its Final Event on 28 May 2026 in Prague and online, bringing together stakeholders from humanitarian organisations, the bioeconomy sector, research and academia, EU policy circles and industry working in humanitarian or bioeconomy contexts. The event created a cross-sector space to discuss how bio-based innovations and circular approaches can support more sustainable solid waste management in humanitarian settings.  

Over the past two and a half years, Bio4HUMAN has explored how bio-based solutions can respond to the practical waste management challenges faced in humanitarian aid. The Final Event showcased the project’s key findings, lessons learned, practical recommendations and tools, while opening a discussion on what is needed to scale sustainable solutions responsibly in real-world humanitarian contexts.  

The event opened with reflections on Bio4HUMAN’s mission, context and objectives, with contributions from Anja Pirjevec, Senior Environmental Sustainability and Climate Resilience Advisor at DG ECHO; Giulio Pattanaro, Bio4HUMAN’s Project Officer; and Andrea Motola, Bio4HUMAN’s Project Coordinator. A keynote speech by Magdalena Davis, Climate Program Director at People in Need, set the tone for the day by linking humanitarian action with the urgent need for climate resilience and environmental sustainability. 

The first session, “Evidence in Action: Key Findings & Field Impact,” presented Bio4HUMAN’s journey from understanding the waste management challenge to creating an actionable impact in humanitarian contexts. The session highlighted the project’s mapping of solid waste management stakeholders across South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Europe, insights from needs assessments with key stakeholders, the scoping of bio-based solutions, and the use of social life-cycle assessment and life-cycle costing tools to understand what can realistically work in the field.  

Following this, an online contribution from WORM, Bio4HUMAN’s sister project further reinforced the value of collaboration between European initiatives working on waste, circularity and sustainability in humanitarian settings. The session helped position Bio4HUMAN not only as a research project, but as part of a wider community seeking practical and scalable solutions for responsible, greener humanitarian response. 

The second session, “Bio-Based Solutions in Practice: Real-World Case Studies,” moved from project results to the decision-making process behind them. Speakers discussed how Bio4HUMAN moved from a wide range of possible solutions to a focused set of actionable choices, using different criteria, methodologies and assessment tools to compare options fairly. The discussion underlined a central project lesson: bio-based solutions are not automatically better in every context, and their value depends on performance, availability, cost, supply chains, waste treatment infrastructure, end-of-life pathways and local conditions.  

The third session, “The Road Ahead: Scaling Sustainable Waste Solutions,” brought together perspectives from academia, policy, industry and humanitarian organisations. The panel focused on what needs to happen next for sustainable waste solutions to work in humanitarian contexts, addressing evidence gaps, enabling policy and procurement frameworks, market readiness, local production, supply chains, affordability, field usability and community acceptance.  

Across the discussion, speakers emphasised that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Solutions must be assessed against local infrastructure, governance, security conditions, environmental realities, social acceptance, and operational feasibility. Furthermore, there must be cooperation between different stakeholders – geographically and sectoral – to learn to speak a common language and understand each other’s lived realities. This was strongly reflected in questions from online participants, including local stakeholders from South Sudan and eastern DRC, who raised issues around partnership opportunities, funding for grassroots civil society organisations, EU instruments for innovation, and the challenges of implementing environmental solutions in contexts affected by political and security instability.  

In the closing session, Nelo Emerencia, Director of Human Capital and Stakeholder Relations at the Bio-based Industries Consortium, and Andrea Motola reflected on the key takeaways and the way forward as Bio4HUMAN has created a valuable evidence base, practical tools and cross-sector partnerships to strengthen the support of sustainable waste management in humanitarian action.  

By connecting field realities with scientific assessment, policy dialogue, industry perspectives and humanitarian practice, Bio4HUMAN’s Final Event demonstrated the importance of multi-actor collaboration in building a more circular, sustainable and responsible humanitarian sector. 

For more information about Bio4HUMAN and its project outputs, please visit: bio4human