Waste production and resource use is increasing for electric and electronic consumer products. At the same time many critical materials cannot be recovered in recycling processes. Therefore a promising strategy would be to lengthen the lifetimes of these products in order to get closer to a Circular Economy. The project PROMPT is going to support the development of more durable and longer lasting products by lowering the asymmetry of information between consumer and manufacturer and thereby to allow consumers to make better choices. This is achieved by the development of an integral testing programme for electric and electronic consumer products that takes into account the main key issues of product failures and premature obsolescence: • Product durability and reliability • Adaptability, upgradability, and reparability • User behaviour and market PROMPT takes a multi-stakeholder approach by including different consumer, test, repair and research organisations in the consortium who will carry out the work. Consequently, results will be achieved that are viable for different stakeholders and independent from manufacturers. With the help of an Advisory Board, additional stakeholder input will be gathered. The board will consist of experts from industry, retail, design, environmental, science and consumer sectors. A baseline of research will be established by collecting empirical data on technical issues, design shortcomings, market obstacles and replacement causes for premature obsolescence. These results will give input to the development of a range of specific testing methods addressing the three fields of issues outlined above. The results will be synthesized in an integral testing programme for premature obsolescence that will be validated and benchmarked through test cases. Results will be analysed and prepared to give validated input to standardisation, product design, consumer communication and policy recommendations.

The CloseWEEE project integrates three interlinked research and innovation areas for an improved, resource-efficient recycling of polymer materials and critical raw materials from electrical and electronics equipment (EEE): (1) Efficient and effective disassembly of EEE is key for high quality material fractions, separation of materials but also for reuse of components and parts. An information system for dismantlers will be developed, accessing webbased dismantling instructions, to ease the dismantling process, reduce destruction of reusable parts and components and to allow for a deeper dismantling level for better economics of the Recycling process. (2) Developing resource-efficient and innovative solutions for closing the loop of post-consumer high-grade plastics from WEEE, for new EEE through advanced recovery of valuable plastic streams which do not have a recycling system yet, and subsequent replacement of halogenated flame retardants by halogen-free flame retardants in new EEE. (3) Improved recycling of Lithium-ion batteries through increasing the recovery rates of cobalt and researching a recovery technology for the critical raw material graphite from those batteries. These technology innovations in the various stages of the EEE recycling value chain are complemented by research on reusing the recovered polymer fractions in new EEE, defining product design measures in favour of an optimised recycling eco-system, embedding related product design criteria in EU policy measures and global green procurement activities. These activities will support effectively the objectives of the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials.

sustainablySMART will make a change to the life cycle of mobile information and communication devices by developing new product design approaches (including enhanced end-of-life performance, re-use and re-manufacturing aspects; i.e. implementing “Design for a Circular Economy”) for smartphones and tablet computers on the product and printed circuit board level, and by new re-/de-manufacturing processes with improved resource efficiency through (1) enhanced sorting capabilities and speed (optimized sorting efficiency), (2) automated disassembly of mobile IT devices for extraction of reusable components / modules, better material separation and depollution of end-of-life devices (increase value creation out of discarded devices significantly to create an economic advantage over shredding processes), and (3) high-quality performance testing (batteries) and rework (semiconductors and modules) of reusable components/modules (creating a market push for reusable parts through enhanced availability for repair and cascade reuse)