The high-performance requirements requested by the industry and consumers are responsible that currently 17% of total plastic packaging is multilayer material , meaning 3.03 Mt of plastics. Difficulties for recycling it are accentuated, being mostly landfilled or incinerated. MERLIN project has joined a partnership between sorting technology providers, recyclers, research centers, social innovation experts and end-users to design cradle to cradle solutions. This 36-month research project will offer innovative solutions for all the processes required to increase the quality and rate of recycled plastic materials coming from multi-layer packaging waste: (i) SORTING (combining optical sensors, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and robotics), (ii) DELAMINATION (optimizing depolymerisation and using solvent-based processes), (iii) RECYLING (techniques for repolymerization and upcycling of polymers) and (iv) VALIDATION (developing rigid and flexible packaging solutions and demonstrating circularity of the processes). These solutions will be developed and later validated in a real environment to reach technology readiness level (TRL) 6. This will be complemented with additional techniques and tools for circularity design to increase knowledge and effectiveness in the closure of the European multilayer plastic chain. Finally, transversal activities related to regulation and standardization, safety, sustainability, business, training, dissemination and communication will support to maximize the impact and effectiveness of the project. These actions are aligned with the ones proposed by the European Plastic Strategy to achieve that by 2030 all plastic packaging should be designed to be recyclable or reusable and decrease the quantity of waste generated Potential annual carbon footprint saving that could be achieved recycling all the multilayer waste in Europe could reach 7.42 Mt CO2/year, with a potential economic of €10,605 million and more 106,000 new job positions.

Globally 359 million metric tons of plastic were produced in 2018 and Europe produced 17% of this amount. In the same year, 29.1mio tons of plastic waste was generated in the EU and only a third was recycled. While sorted and pure plastic waste can be recycled relatively well, a major problem is recycling of unsorted waste, which still holds a large share of valuable carbon feedstock but is currently either landfilled or energetically valorised, i.e., incinerated, both producing greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions instead of recovering the precious carbon feedstock contained. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop new technologies that can not only valorise unsorted plastic but also other waste in large amounts to yield material streams that can replace fossil material streams. One promising technology to recycle unsorted heterogeneous plastic waste is pyrolysis. While the low to medium temperature pyrolysis (400C) produces mainly liquid oil that needs to be fed into the furnace of the steam cracker unit (at higher temperature than 900C) to produce olefins, with our proposal, at high-temperature pyrolysis (<850C) syngas stream (light olefins rich) is fostered and could be integrated downstream the furnace of the steam cracker. However, the use of high-temperature pyrolysis for plastic waste recycling has not yet become an industrial practice since gas treatment and integration present a great challenge. Plastics2Olefins project will address this challenge - it will design, build, and run a demonstration plant for recycling of unsorted plastic waste at Repsol's plant Puertollano (Spain), which will be digitalised and run on 100% renewable (electric) energy. The project estimates to reduce the lifecycle GHG emissions by 70-80% compared to incineration and existing plastics recycling processes providing an important contribution to the EU reaching climate neutral by 2050 and set a pathway for commercialisation of renewable plastic feedstock replacing fossil fuels.

By 2030, renewable Energy Sources (RES), and its infrastructures, are expected to increase 40% in Europe. Parts of RES strategies are onshore and offshore wind energy. The investment into new RES infrastructure implies an update of the current wind turbines, resulting in waste of the composite materials that constitute blades. To turn RES into the most promising and economically viable sources of renewable energy, we need to provide clean renewable energy without any emissions during operation. The blades, among the most important components in the wind turbines, made with composite, are currently regarded as unrecyclable. It is estimated that by 2050 the end-of-life (EOL) blades waste will generate more than 2 Mt annually, and cumulative blade waste in 2050 will lie between 21.4 Mt and 69.4 Mt, worldwide. EOL options for decommissioning wind turbine blades should be explored with the aim of providing environmentally favorable guidelines for managing wind turbine blade waste, and the possibility for material recovery and recycling is crucial if circular economy is the goal in the wind power sector. One possibility to avoid the accumulation of EOL blades in the environment is to convert the composite blades into new environmentally friendly building materials such as green cement. This option would demand some processing of the composite waste. Another option could be the reuse of the blades directly without much processing, e.g. . as new blades or as other products. Furthermore, the composite waste from blades could be combined with similar waste from other industrial sectors to enlarge the potential of a composite wind blade recycling process. Therefore, the general scope of the proposed project is to evaluate and demonstrate in large scale the possibility of recycling or resource recovery from blades and similar waste materials in a large consortium with some of Europe's key players in areas of importance for the project.