In view of moving towards a post-petroleum society, the communication of the European Commission on 13 February 2012 entitled "Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe", and in particular its Action Plan, aims to integrate better biomass producing and processing sectors in order to reconcile food security, natural resource scarcity and environmental objectives with the use of biomass for industrial and energy purposes. Among others, construction and automotive industries have high potential for effective implementation of the strategy of European Bioeconomy in terms of more efficient use of biomass and industrial by products for development of bio-based value added products. Reinvent project will answer these needs by developing and combining bio based materials and fibres for replacing the petroleum based polyurethane (PUR) insulation products used in buildings and soft foams for vehicles interior products. Polyols, natural cellulose fibres and nanocrystals, and biomass derived nanoparticles (NPs) will be derived by advanced technologies from sustainable wood-based and agro-based sources to develop and validate: i) Novel bio based rigid moulded and spraying insulation foam systems for the construction industry, e.g. composite bridge decks, spraying building insulations and insulating sandwich structures, and ii) Novel bio based soft and semi-rigid foams for the automotive industry, e.g. sub-layers for car ceilings, dashboards and seat covers. These customer products will be validated for their enhanced properties, sustainability and low cost, and compared to currently available petroleum- and bio-based counterparts used in the construction and automotive industries, respectively. To enhance the sustainability of these products and materials, new energy and cost-efficient recycling technologies for the bio-based products will be developed.

The overall objective of the EcoPlast project is to develop comprehensive digital solutions to enhance circularity in the automotive plastic value chain. These solutions will help ensure high quality, non-toxicity and durability of secondary materials. Share of secondary materials will be increased in new products. Recovery, recycling and upcycling rates will be increased and uptake of secondary materials for high value applications will be proliferated. We will develop EcoPlast platform which will consist of secured and privacy protected collaborative space, ecoDesign tool assisting circular product design, LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) tool for increasing sustainability, CI (Circularity Index) calculator for measuring circularity, Digital Twins (DTs) for process optimisation for extrusion and injection moulding processes as well as upcycling and recycling processes. AI and robotics will be integrated for End-of-life Vehicle (ELV) management processes consisting detection, sorting, and dismantling. Blockchain based Digital Product Passport (DPP) will be employed for automotive plastic products’ traceability to increase trust among the value chain partners. DPP will also help achieving 100% sorting efficiency. A circular marketplace in the platform will help trading recycled and upcycled products. This will also help in reuse, repair, refurbish and remanufacture of dismantled automotive plastic parts. All these activities will help create new value chains around the automotive plastic sector. Automotive plastic parts will be manufactured in this project using recycled plastics, bio-composites and biobased plastics and will be demonstrated, tested, and validated along with the developed digital technologies in large-scale facilities. Novel recycling and upcycling technologies will also be demonstrated. Wider adaptation of EcoPlast solution will help address almost all the challenges automotive plastic value chain actors are currently facing.