EU-backed CIRCULANDIA launches €9.6m effort to connect regenerative agriculture, local food systems and reusable packaging

Horizon Europe project brings together cities, researchers, businesses and regional authorities to test circular food-system models designed for replication across Europe

• CIRCULANDIA is a €9.6 million Horizon Europe project running from 2026 to 2030
• The initiative links regenerative agriculture, local food systems and reusable packaging within one circular-economy framework
• The consortium brings together 35 organisations from 12 European countries
• Pilot actions will cover soil health, carbon sequestration, urban farming, biostreams and reusable takeaway packaging
• A three-stage replication model will move solutions from pilot cities to replicator cities and multiplier regions
• Lille Métropole will test soil-restoration and circular resource-management approaches
• The project supports wider EU objectives on circularity, climate action, healthy soils and packaging waste reduction
• Its longer-term value will depend on whether pilot results can be successfully replicated across different European regions

(NEWS) HELSINKI, 11-Aug-2026 — /EuropaWire/ — A new European research and innovation project is seeking to tackle food-system sustainability as an interconnected problem rather than as a collection of separate challenges, bringing regenerative agriculture, local food supply chains and reusable packaging under a single circular-economy framework.

CIRCULANDIA, coordinated by Finland-based CLIC Innovation, officially started on 1 May 2026 and is scheduled to run until 31 October 2030, according to the European Commission’s CORDIS project record. The project has a total cost of €9.63 million, including approximately €9 million in direct European Union funding through Horizon Europe.

The Helsinki-Uusimaa Regional Council, announcing the initiative in a press release published by EuropaWire, described the project as an attempt to move away from conventional production-consumption-waste models and replace them with circular systems capable of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving soil health and biodiversity, shortening food supply chains and cutting packaging waste.

At the heart of CIRCULANDIA are three linked areas that are often addressed separately: regenerative agriculture, local food production and distribution, and reusable takeaway packaging. CLIC Innovation’s official project information says the intention is to develop solutions that work across urban and regional food systems rather than optimise individual components in isolation.

Anna Tenhunen-Lunkka, Head of Circular Economy at CLIC Innovation and coordinator of the consortium

Anna Tenhunen-Lunkka, Head of Circular Economy at CLIC Innovation and coordinator of the consortium, made the same distinction in announcing the project. In a LinkedIn post, she said CIRCULANDIA had been deliberately designed to connect fields normally dealt with separately and described its broader objective as changing how food systems operate as a whole rather than simply improving individual parts.

From soil carbon to takeaway containers

The breadth of that approach is reflected in the planned demonstrations.

According to CLIC Innovation and the original project announcement, activities include expanding remote monitoring systems used to verify carbon sequestration, introducing regenerative practices on municipality-owned farmland, recovering and making productive use of underused biological side streams, demonstrating urban farming models and establishing local reusable-packaging ecosystems. Consumer participation in reusable takeaway systems is another component.

Information published by the EU CAP Network provides additional detail about how those workstreams are expected to operate.

Regenerative farming pilots will involve farmers and public authorities and are intended to improve soil health, increase carbon sequestration and return nutrients from locally available biological side streams to agricultural land. Digital monitoring tools will be used to support implementation and verification.

The food-system strand, meanwhile, is expected to include food hubs, urban food production and new governance and business models connecting producers, municipalities and consumers. Sustainable public procurement is also identified as a tool for strengthening local markets and shortening supply chains.

For packaging, CIRCULANDIA plans city-level demonstrations involving businesses and consumers, including logistics systems, operating models and incentives intended to encourage reusable alternatives to disposable takeaway packaging.

That work comes at a significant moment for the European packaging market. The EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation entered into force in February 2025 and generally begins applying on 12 August 2026. Among other measures, the regulation introduces new requirements relating to packaging waste prevention and reuse. Restaurants and cafés will be required to allow customers to use their own containers for takeaway food and drinks from 2027 and to offer reusable takeaway packaging from 2028, subject to the regulation’s detailed provisions and exemptions.

CIRCULANDIA is not presented as a regulatory compliance programme, but the timing means its experiments with reusable systems will unfold as European businesses and municipalities are adapting to a substantially changed packaging-policy environment.

A project designed to travel

Replication is central to CIRCULANDIA’s design.

Rather than limiting demonstrations to a fixed group of pilot sites, the consortium uses a three-stage structure. Solutions are first tested in pilot cities, then adapted by “replicator” cities and subsequently supported through multiplier cities and regions intended to prepare the models for wider adoption elsewhere in Europe.

Tenhunen-Lunkka described this scaling logic on LinkedIn as an effort to ensure that workable solutions do not remain confined to their original locations.

The EU CAP Network says demonstration results are expected to be turned into guidelines, handbooks and training materials, alongside capacity-building and knowledge-transfer activities. Environmental, economic and social impacts will also be monitored, with findings intended to inform policy recommendations and future replication.

That focus on replication also connects CIRCULANDIA to a broader network of EU-backed circular-economy initiatives.

The European Circular Innovation Valley, or ECIV, described CIRCULANDIA as complementary to programmes focused on building regional innovation networks. In a LinkedIn post, ECIV argued that its own role in connecting regions and encouraging knowledge exchange can work alongside projects such as CIRCULANDIA that move into demonstration, testing and replication of concrete solutions.

Lille puts soil restoration at the centre

The involvement of Métropole Européenne de Lille illustrates how the broad European framework is being translated into local experimentation.

Lille Métropole’s EU Office says the French metropolitan authority will focus heavily on soil health and circular resource management, linking CIRCULANDIA with its wider agricultural and food strategy. Its work includes using compost from the metropolitan Organic Valorisation Centre to restore degraded or polluted soils.

The authority also intends to develop its “Technosol” approach in collaboration with scientific partners and the Trichon urban farm in Roubaix. The concept combines organic and mineral materials to recreate fertile soil capable of supporting agricultural production while restoring functions including water retention, biodiversity and pollutant filtration.

Lille says upstream collection and sorting of organic waste will also be examined, including problems such as microplastic contamination and variations in compost quality. Depending on quality, recovered material could eventually be used for conventional agriculture, urban farming or urban greening.

The Lille work sits alongside the European Commission’s broader Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”, whose goal is to establish 100 living labs and lighthouses to support the transition towards healthy soils by 2030. The Commission estimates that more than 60% of EU soils are currently unhealthy.

35 organisations — but different roles

CIRCULANDIA’s project materials describe a network of 35 organisations from 12 European countries spanning municipalities, regional authorities, businesses, research bodies, industry organisations, clusters and NGOs.

The numbers become clearer when the project structure is examined more closely. The European Commission’s CORDIS record lists CLIC Innovation as coordinator alongside 24 formal project participants, while CLIC Innovation separately identifies ten multiplier cities and regions supporting future uptake. Together, those groups account for the 35 organisations described by the project.

The geographic spread ranges from Finland, Germany, Spain and Norway to France, Belgium, Portugal, Croatia and the Netherlands, with multiplier partners also located in Ukraine and Latvia.

Métropole Européenne de Lille’s entry into the consortium also offers a glimpse into how such large EU collaborations are assembled.

Marie Guitton of Lille Métropole wrote on LinkedIn that CIRCULANDIA would mark the authority’s first participation as a partner in a Horizon Europe project. She said Lille joined the consortium within only a few days, helped by earlier work on another Horizon Europe proposal addressing a related subject and by rapid coordination with CLIC Innovation. The accompanying LinkedIn discussion was largely congratulatory, including comments welcoming Lille’s rapid involvement and the resulting collaboration.

The challenge will be proving replication

CIRCULANDIA begins with an unusually broad definition of circularity: soil management, biological residues, food production, public procurement, urban agriculture, packaging logistics, consumer behaviour and regional governance are all treated as parts of the same system.

That breadth is also likely to be one of the project’s main tests.

Agricultural conditions, municipal procurement systems, existing waste infrastructure, consumer behaviour and local business economics differ considerably between European regions. The project’s answer is to rely heavily on co-creation with farmers, companies, public authorities and other stakeholders and to adapt demonstrations to local social, economic and environmental conditions rather than impose one uniform model.

For now, however, the anticipated reductions in emissions, waste and resource use remain project objectives rather than demonstrated outcomes. CIRCULANDIA only began in May 2026, and its success will ultimately depend on whether the pilots can show measurable improvements and whether those results survive the transition from demonstration sites to cities and regions operating under different conditions.

If that replication model works, the project could offer something more useful than a collection of individual sustainability pilots: evidence about how agricultural practices, local food economies, municipal policy and packaging systems can be redesigned together — and whether such integrated approaches can be transferred from one European territory to another.