**7. Conclusions**

The project took place in Piedmont, an important wine and rice producer region. Rural areas have grea<sup>t</sup> potential to include new and interesting business models that create new opportunities and quality jobs. The InnovaEcoFood project has addressed more circular value chains expanding to other sectors (food, pharma, textile, polymers), valorizing agriculture and process by-products by connecting the actors on a territory, diversifying and revitalizing the economy, considering the reality of local needs. The project starts from the current value chains highlighting the by-products generated in each step, either in the field or during transformation processes. For each output, it highlighted different scenarios that lead to their valorization and the creation of connections between the different activities, finally focusing on the valorization of marc and hull for food purposes. Thanks to the project consortium, the use of these by-products has been successfully experimented—after mechanical processing and extraction with supercritical CO2-ingredients inside bakery products and creams. At present, their use in the food sector is limited due, among the other things, to legislative limitations regarding the classification of by-products as waste and the impossibility of handling them as raw materials. However, there is room to open different scenarios. As Europe is facing a problem of finite resources available, the introduction of added-value by-products as new ingredients (products with high functionality) in the food sector is advisable in the next future. It should also be considered primary importance to reduce food waste. The project highlights the approach's scalability at the EU level to other production realities and value chains.

**Author Contributions:** All authors equally contributed to the article (conceptualization, methodology, validation, analysis). All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was co-funded by the Piedmont Region-POR FESR 2007/13 -I.1.3 Innovazione e PMI.

**Acknowledgments:** We thank the project partners for this valuable experimentation and for giving us access to their specific experimentation data. We thank Silvia Barbero, who contributed to setting the methodological framework thanks to her fundamental expertise in the field of SD. We want to thank also the Department of Applied Science and Technology (DISAT) of the Politecnico of Torino, in particular Debora Fino, Tonia Tommasi, and Silvia Fraterrigo for the chemical part, and the Department of Management and Production (DIGEP) of the Politecnico of Torino and in particular Claudio Castiglione for the economic analysis of those processes.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
