News and events published on the Eco-innovation Community Platform

• News - "Seaweed and other species could improve sustainability of aquaculture and reduce pollution"
• New event - "Public session on 'Water in the Circular Economy' "
• New event - "Information Day for the 2016 Call for Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) Proposals"
• News - "Urban symbiosis: recommendations for cities to re-use resources"

Buildings have a huge environmental footprint. Their construction and use consumes about half of the extracted materials and energy used in the European Union, and is responsible for about a third of EU water consumption. Construction and demolition of buildings also generates about a third of the EU's waste by volume. The Commission's Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) has published the findings from the initial part of the process towards the development of indicators. This concerns the identification of sustainability “macro-objectives”, or overall goals, for the construction sector.

The environmental costs arising from the production and use of plastic currently outweigh the plastic industry's global profits, but a “new plastics economy” based on circular principles is possible, according to a new report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Economic Forum.

A wastewater treatment facility on the site of a Croatian textiles factory could be the first in the European Union to have the capability to recover and reuse up to 100% of the water that the plant consumes. The facility was inaugurated in November 2015.