How is a topic such as microplastics socially problematised? How can consumers use plastics more sustainably? And what role do the interests and perceptions of different actors play in international plastics regulation? These and other questions are posed by social scientists in a number of joint research projects funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the framework of the research focus "Plastics in the Environment". In this poster series, social science research from ten joint research projects is presented and first interim results are briefly and concisely summarised.

At the launch of the new event series ZUKUNFTSFORUM ECORNET on 9 May 2019, scientists, politicians and representatives of civil society debated the need for a legal framework for climate protection in Germany and its possible components under the guiding question "What kind of climate protection law is needed?" Matthias Duwe, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, emphasised the advantages of a legal framework in his presentation on the experiences of other EU countries.

As part of the EU H2020 RURECO project, Dr. Josselin Rouillard carried out a one-month research exchange with the University of Davis, California focusing on sustainable groundwater management in Europe, France and California. Seminars with academic staff at UC Davis and Stanford University were organised comparing European and Californian strategies for sustainable groundwater management. Workshops and meetings were organised with the State Water Resource Control Board and nine groundwater sustainable agencies across the state of California. The blogpost is linked in the article.

An international workshop titled "Act Now - Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment" was held in Brussels (Belgium). The over 50 participants included representatives from the EU Parliament, national regulatory agencies, the pharmaceutical industry, the water industry, and NGOs, amongst others. This report presents key points of the plenary presentations, summarises the main points of the first podium discussion, and provides an overview of the discussions in the three World Café tables. The report is available for download.

What kind of solutions are required to increase the market share of sustainable bio-based and circular products in Germany and Europe? Which products and product properties do consumers demand? What are the innovations that can be developed and what are suitable research and communication strategies? What role do local value chains and markets play? And how does a supportive regulatory environment look like?

On the 13 May 2019, Ecologic Institute organised the workshop "Beyond sectors – chances and challenges of multi-stakeholder collaboration in the bioeconomy" in the context of the 8th International Bioeconomy Conference in Halle (Saale). The aim of the workshop was to discuss the challenges of cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder cooperation in the bioeconomy as well as potential instruments for their facilitation and to present good practice examples. The workshop was held in German.

Kemper, Melanie, Christian Bruhn 2019: Kurzkonzept für den Relaunch der Internetplattform Meeresmüll – www.muell-im-meer.de. Berlin, unpublished.

The bioeconomy carries the promise to offer important opportunities for rural employment and regional added value. The transition towards a more efficient and fossil-free economy should actively involve a broad spectrum of stakeholders and citizens in order to provide them with the opportunity to participate as co-creators in the design of regional strategies and to promote a sustainable use of agricultural, forest and marine ecosystems. Building on this idea, the overall goal of BE-Rural is to explore the potential of regional and local bio-based economies by supporting relevant actors in the participatory development of bioeconomy strategies, roadmaps and business models. The project will focus on regions in five modest and moderate innovator countries: Latvia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

The third set of dialogue workshops for government officials and experts from the "Climate Recon 2050" project were held in Copenhagen at the end of February 2019. The project team have been organizing two main fora for that workshop: a Technical Dialogue, for modellers and other experts designing 2050 climate policy scenarios – and a Policy-Maker Platform, to create a space for experience sharing among representatives from different EU countries.

On 7 March 2019, experts working on nature-based solutions (NBS) met in Berlin for an exchange of experiences. The discussions focused on the challenges of planning and implementing NBS and the opportunities and creative solutions to overcome them. The results of this meeting will be integrated into including the development of a catalogue of NBS and an overview of policy instruments to the "Climate NBS Polska" project.

Bringing together food waste experts from across Europe, the REFRESH Community of Experts (CoE) launched a series of four webinars on 'Tackling Food Waste Across the Supply Chain'. The series demonstrates how policy makers, manufacturers, retailers, distributors, municipalities and many more organisations involved in the food supply chain can effectively address food waste. This month-long webinar series, hosted from 9 April to 2 May 2019, included expert speakers from ten institutions. The webinars offered an opportunity to gain insights from case studies, ask questions of the speakers and get signposts to further information.

This final report contains the interim results of a project on communication strategies for reducing agriculture-related entry of veterinary pharmaceuticals into the environment.

This report translates the findings of the REFRESH project on consumer behaviour into policy recommendations. It helps national and regional policy makers in designing and improving appropriate interventions against food waste. It focus on policy instruments that aim to reduce consumer food waste including in-home and out-of-home consumption.

Public campaigns and other policy instruments can significantly influence consumer behaviour and contribute to a reduction of consumer food waste. However, there are only very few studies that have evaluated to what extent policy interventions actually reduced or prevented food waste. In this REFRESH Policy brief Ecologic Institute's Stephanie Wunder summarises REFRESH findings on consumer behaviour as well as related research results and derives policy recommendations to reduce consumer food waste.

In January 2019, the stakeholder workshop "Using the Subsoil to Better Prepare for Droughts – An Acceptance Analysis of Measures to Enhance the Subsoil" of the BMBF-funded BonaRes project "Soil³ – Sustainable Subsoil Management" took place in Bonn. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the prevailing opinions on subsoil management measures. Ecologic Institute researchers discussed with farmers and other ecological actors under which conditions they would implement or support these measures. The protocol is available for download.