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Short Abstract

The EU project CHEERS upcycles brewery side-streams into new bio-based products. Its Zooniverse activity Who’s Responsibility is it Anyway? lets citizens rank sustainability priorities, showing how citizen science can shape circular economy innovations and make them more democratic.

Abstract

The transition to a circular economy can challenge conventional waste management systems, often driven by technological and policy changes, but the role of citizens remains underexplored. The Horizon Europe CHEERS project is developing new ways to upcycle brewery side-streams into high-value, bio-based products, including insect protein drinks and cosmetics. While these innovations promise environmental gains, their societal acceptance and priorities, economic, social, or environmental, are uncertain. By recognising citizens as active "circular citizens", not just consumers, CHEERS seeks to showcase how citizen science can engage the public in shaping the circular transition, waste reduction, and sustainable industrial practices.

To open these industrial processes to public reflection, CHEERS launched the citizen science activity Who’s Responsibility is it Anyway? on the Zooniverse platform. Participants are invited to compare pairs of business practices and societal factors, such as fair labour, local sourcing, carbon footprint reduction, or transparency, and vote on which they believe should take priority when designing new circular bio-based products and services. The approach crowdsources values and expectations from diverse citizens, generating a dataset that informs both sustainability assessment and business model design within CHEERS.

This presentation reflects on lessons from running a value-elicitation citizen science project in an industrial circular economy context: how to translate complex bio-refinery processes into accessible online engagement, how participants’ choices reveal trade-offs between environmental, social and economic goals, and how such data can democratise and guide technology-driven circular transitions.