Eco-Innovation in the Society

Eco-Innovations are innovations that benefit the environment as well as the economy and the society. An Eco-Innovation can be a new or improved product or process but also a new service or business model that significantly reduces the environmental burden during its whole life time. It can also refer to an organisational or social innovation. ECO-INNOVERA aims to support the diffusion of Eco-Innovations into the whole value chain, taking into account the framework conditions (e. g. regulation, financial opportunities, infrastructure, demand).

A paradigm change is needed by all actors – researchers, industry/SMEs, policy makers and private users – to transfer Europe into a sustainable green economy. The society, especially private users play an important role in the success of Eco-Innovations. With their consumption behaviour private users can boost the diffusion of Eco-Innovations.
ECO-INNOVERA will address questions on how to bring information about Eco-Innovation into the society, like 

• What qualifies an innovation as an Eco-Innovation and how can an Eco-Innovation be identified by private users?
• What makes Eco-Innovations attractive to users?
• What are the concrete benefits (environment, economy, society) of a certain Eco-Innovation?
• What are effective ways to inform consumers about the environmental impact of a product?

ECO-INNOVERA will produce tailor-made target-group-oriented electronic and printed materials for the public and interested groups to support the diffusion of Eco-Innovation along the whole value chain.