This document serves as the opening chapter of a book that addresses the critical issue of resource depletion in the built environment, illustrating the unsustainable trends in current construction and demolition practices that extensively rely on new raw materials. It highlights the significant impact of the building sector on global resource consumption, energy utilization, and waste generation, with alarming statistics such as buildings accounting for 40% of the world’s extracted materials and a significant source of waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Advocating for a transformative shift towards a circular economy in the built environment, the text emphasizes sustainable and regenerative economic practices that minimize waste and maximize resource efficiency. This approach necessitates the redesign of systems to ensure the durability, reparability, and recyclability of construction materials, thereby promoting a model where waste is systematically eliminated and materials are continually repurposed. The document also discusses the 10R strategy, which centres on minimizing waste and enhancing resource efficiency, and explores various circular practices within the construction sector. It includes examples from case studies and best practices to demonstrate the viability and advantages of adopting circular economy principles. The challenges and success factors in implementing such practices are thoroughly examined, emphasizing the urgent need for increased awareness, supportive policies, and robust stakeholder collaboration to foster a more sustainable and resource-efficient built environment. The first chapter sets the stage for a detailed exploration of these themes throughout the book’s subsequent sections.

This study examines the integration of Circular Economy principles and digital transformation in the Spanish furniture sector, highlighting their combined impact on sustainability, resource efficiency, and technological innovation amid global challenges. The research focuses on how these principles and digital technologies like IoT can foster sustainable industrial practices in the Industry 5.0 era, characterized by human-centricity and environmental sustainability. Through semi-structured interviews and secondary data analysis, the study finds that circular policies drive technological innovation and resilience but face obstacles like high costs, technical expertise gaps, and regulatory fragmentation, particularly for SMEs. It emphasizes the importance of government policies and industry collaboration in overcoming these barriers. The research provides recommendations for policymakers and industry leaders to enhance regulatory frameworks, support SMEs and promote innovation, contributing valuable insights into sustainable industrial practices in a dynamic global market.

The NewEcoSmart project addresses the need to foster inclusive green and digital transitions in rural habitat sectors by systematically assessing local socio-technical readiness and tailoring capacity-building interventions. We adapted the validated SCIROCCO Exchange Maturity Self-Assessment Tool—selecting eight dimensions relevant to environmental, technological and social innovation—and conducted a two-phase evaluation across three pilot sites in Italy, Portugal and Spain. Phase 1 mapped stakeholder evidence against predefined criteria; Phase 2 engaged local actors (45+ adults, SMEs and micro-firms) in a self-assessment to determine digital, green and entrepreneurial skill gaps. For each domain of the SCIROCCO Tool, local actors can assign a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 5. The final score of the SCIROCCO tool can be a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 40. Quantitative maturity scores revealed heterogeneous profiles (Pacentro and Majella Madre = 5; Yecla = 10; Adelo Area = 23), underscoring diverse ecosystem strengths and limitations. A qualitative analysis, framed by Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) domains, identified emergent training needs that are clustered at three levels: MACRO (community-wide awareness and engagement), MESO (decision-maker capacity for strategic planning and governance) and MICRO (industry-specific practical skills). The adapted SCIROCCO tool effectively proposes the assessment of socio-technical maturity in rural contexts and guides the design of a modular, multi-layered training framework. These findings support the need for scalable deployment of interventions that are targeted to the maturity of the local ecosystems to accelerate innovations through equitable green and digital transformations in complex socio-cultural settings.

The issue of twin transition is gaining momentum and attracting increasing attention from policymakers, practitioners and researchers, particularly in Western economies. In contrast, Central and Eastern European (CEE) stakeholders have— paradoxically—just started to tackle this issue in very recent years, while comprehensive research on this phenomenon is rather scarce. As such, policy and practitioners’ information are lacking, threatening the attainment of strategic sustainability goals at international and local levels. In times of multi-crises, this situation can be amplified by unexpected events. In response, this study provides a topical contribution to the current knowledge by analyzing the state of the art on the issues of green and digital transformation within CEE innovation ecosystems. Grounded in the quintuple-helix theory perspective and using a qualitative literature review-based approach, we show that CEE countries currently face several structural barriers limiting their twin transitions. These include, for example, high dependency on external knowledge and technologies, weak entrepreneurial initiative, limited absorptive capacity and low eco-awareness. Our findings offer several practical implications for businesses and policymakers, especially in the areas of supporting multi-helix cooperation, preparing more tailored policy initiatives and implementing circular economy practices for higher business resilience. In turn, we highlight the need for circular economy action plans, hubs and living labs based on the different maturity levels of CEE innovation ecosystems.

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is increasingly recognised as a key mechanism for advancing circular economy objectives and low-carbon industrial transformation.

El propósito del presente estudio ha sido determinar qué factores tecnológicos, organizacionales y ambientales afectan a la adopción de las tecnologías 4.0 en las empresas del sector del mueble. El sector del mueble es una industria caracterizada por su dinamismo y por la gran intensidad de su mano de obra. Pese a la importancia del sector, en la actualidad sigue siendo una industria muy tradicional, con una minoría de empresas que han adoptado la industria 4.0. En este contexto, se llevó a cabo este estudio para investigar, mediante un análisis cualitativo a través de nueve entrevistas en profundidad realizadas a expertos del sector, qué factores afectan más a la adopción de tecnologías 4.0 en el sector del mueble. Los resultados indican que los factores organizacionales influencian más en la adopción de tecnologías 4.0, sin embargo, todos no afectan de la misma forma: algunos facilitan dicha adopción tecnológica, mientras que otros la inhiben.