Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a key solution to address the challenges of conserving natural resources, yet the lack of standards and the difficulty in IS standardisation due to its cross-sectoral nature and additional bottlenecks impede the uptake of IS solutions. RISERS aims to address such bottlenecks through the development of a roadmap towards IS standardisation, promoting resource sharing and the integration of new R&I results to support IS. To this aim, we will operate in several dimensions: (1) Identification of gaps and opportunities in existing sectoral practices and standards for the uptake of priority IS synergies; (2) promote the uptake and contribution of R&I results to IS standardisation through identifying demand-led R&I priorities, as well as through identifying barriers and enablers to market entry for innovative IS solutions; (3) engaging the policy community in IS standardisation through suggesting new or adjusting existing policy Frameworks and initiatives. These activities will be conducted through constant engagement of experts and stakeholders from the industry, standardization bodies, academia, policy, funding bodies and additional relevant stakeholders and continuous dissemination op results and knowledge for their uptake, fostering community building, knowledge exchange and cross-sectoral collaboration. Based on the knowledge developed and gained in all these activities, RISERS will develop a roadmap for developing new or adjusting existing directions IS standardisation to promote circularity of resources. In the long run, thorough facilitating IS standardization RISERS will contribute to, among others, effective use of resources and cross-sectoral interoperability in resource sharing, easier market entry for innovative IS enabling technologies, improved integration of R&I results in IS standardization, cost savings & new revenues from increased adoption of IS and increased EU participation in international standardization.

A growing global population demands increasing food production, which requires increasing use of pesticides and fertilizers. About 130 million tons of herbicides per year are used in Europe alone that persist in the environment, destroy non-target plants and beneficial insects for the soil and produce health effects in animals and humans –cancer, birth defects and endocrine disruption. Moreover, existing herbicides become more and more ineffective due to the evolution and spread of herbicide-resistant weeds. Substitution of herbicides by mechanical automatic systems is under study, but mechanical solutions contribute to deteriorate the soil properties, harm beneficial soil organisms and provide poor results for in-row weeding. WeLASER solution focuses on non-chemical weed management based on applying lethal doses of energy on the weed meristems using a high-power laser source. An AI-vision system discriminates crops from weeds and detects the position of the weed meristems to point the laser on them using a laser scanner. An autonomous vehicle carries these systems all over the field. A smart controller coordinates these systems and uses IoT and cloud computing techniques to manage agricultural knowledge. This technology will provide a clean solution to the weeding problem and will help to decrease significantly the chemicals on the environment. The required technologies for building this system and the number of actors needed to push it close to market demands the participation of ten experienced groups not easily found at the national level. Moreover, the cost of this high-technological equipment exceeds the funding levels of national organizations and claims the collaboration of large governmental institutions. Thus, with the EC help, WeLASER will put to work a large group of actors and stakeholders to advance in achieving the demanded productivity in agriculture while making the environment more sustainable and enhancing health to animals and humans.

FRANCESCA aims to provide crucial support to the EU furniture industry as it moves towards greater circularity. The project's primary objective is to pioneer innovative circular solutions for furniture, encompassing the whole funiture life cycle, including pre-use (from design to delivery), use (maintain, reuse, repair), and post-use (refurbish, repurpose, re-manufacture, re-distribute, and recycle). FRANCESCA will develop and use enabling supporting solutions that address key design, materials, and business model challenges. Concretely, the project develops, tests and disseminates a circular furniture design decision support tool, bridging circular principles with market-based instruments (environmental certifications and standards); it investigates, scopes, and tests alternative biobased materials to accelerate closed-loop strategies by implementing a dedicated industrial symbiosis platform; it designs, prototypes and implements a set of complementary circular business models; develops circular ecosystem management guidance and integrate circular value creation mechanisms enabled by Digital Product Passports. These enabling tools feed a set of three Circular Demonstrators, each focusing on a key circular strategy (design, material innovation, and service business model). Sustainability assessements and environmental technology validation of the novel solutions demonstrate their sustainability potential at scale. Finally, learnings from the project are cristallised in a capacity building toolkit for life-long learning strategies and a set of policy recommendations that are disseminated at EU level. The pragmatic, holistic and hand-on approach, steered by sectoral needs (manufacturers, retailers, CSOs) and supported by a complementary set of design, materials, business and sustainablity experts breaks down the systemic barriers to circular transition and reduces the circularity gap faced by the sector, thus creating long lasting sustainable impact.

Global Manganese-alloys (Mn) are highly linked to the steel sector for key engineering applications in Europe. In 2017, Mn-alloy production was approx. 4 Mio tons, required 12,200 GWh electrical energy and emitted around 14.2 Mio tons of CO2. Therefore, an energy intensive and inherent cross-sectorial value chain that is, nowadays, led by the Asian market demand. PREMA is an ambitious initiative that aims at demonstrating an innovative suite of technologies (involving heat recovery and solar technologic approaches) that allow to pre-treat Mn ores, utilising more efficiently energy and material streams and decreasing direct and indirect CO2 emissions (along with SO2 and NOx). LCA and LCCA methodologies will be implemented from early stages to ensure the technical, economic and environmental viability of the solution across the whole Mn-alloys’ value chain. The vision of PREMA is thus to make the Mn-alloys sector in Europe more flexible, sustainable and attractive. In order to cover the whole value chain, there is a strong presence of South African (SA) partners in the consortium, SA being the top 1 in high quality Mn ores’ extraction and exports worldwide. A win-win situation in order to strengthen the Mn-alloys and steel value chains in Europe. PREMA consortium puts together a total of 11 production facilities spread over Europe and SA among 4 Mn producers, representing an aggregated process capacity of 380 MW (Transalloys in SA, Eramet in France and Norway, Ferroglobe in Norway and Spain and OFZ in Slovakia). The innovative character of the project is brought by major players in R&D across Europe and SA, with the Norwegian organisation SINTEF as coordinator. Last but not least, clustering with other EU initiatives, including other SPIRE projects, will be paid special attention in order to create awareness of the project developments from early stages of the demonstration.