Agriculture: Circular bioeconomy — turning waste into wealth

The circular bioeconomy, with its rapidly growing global significance, offers immense opportunities for agricultural countries like Pakistan. It revolves around transforming agricultural waste, by-products, and co-products into food, bioenergy, and other materials through recycling, reusing, and repurposing. It reduces the reliance on virgin resources, particularly fossil fuels and petrochemical materials, and also decreases waste disposal into the environment. This, in turn, helps mitigate land and air pollution and address challenges like climate change, ecological degradation, and biodiversity loss. Globally, many countries are tapping into the potential of the circular bioeconomy through comprehensive policies and strategies. Finland’s national bioeconomy strategy (2022-2035) aims to integrate agriculture and forestry with bio-based industrial applications.