The incineration of biomass, municipal solid waste and sewage sludge produces significant quantities of ashes in the EU: approximately 25 million tons annually. These residues have currently no use or they are utilized only in low-value applications. Major problems with the use of incineration residues in the construction, water treatment, and other industries are insufficient public awareness of the safety and environmental acceptability of the final products , the lack of uniform regulations, and readiness of the market to accept incineration residues as a supplementary material. The project AshCycle will demonstrate and implement industry-urban symbioses revolving around the underutilized ashes to reach circular and climate neutral economy in Europe. Pilots and replication demonstrations will be carried out in Denmark, Finland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia, Switzerland, and South Africa. The symbioses will include all major actors from the value chains, namely ash providers, ash beneficiation handlers, concrete and adsorbent product providers, as well as engagement of general public. AshCycle answers unmet socio-economic demands, facilitates emerging ash-based circular products for market entry and to unlocks benefits for society by acceptance of new circular concepts.

The UNICO2RN project aims to demonstrate novel routes to convert biogenic CO2 into ingredients and materials, involving metal organic framework-based capture and purification technology and biotechnological processes based on Hydrogen Oxidizing Bacteria. The modularity and flexibility of the developed processes will be shown through 2 demonstration cases in real industrial settings at TRL 7 for sustainable and efficient production of microbial proteins and PHA, from 2 types of biogenic CO2 sources of different concentration and purity. These new routes bring clear advantages in terms of efficiency, safety, environmental footprint and greenhouse gas emission reductions with respect to benchmarks. Their development to TRL7 will enable their industrialization and thus lead to major positive economic, environmental and social/societal impacts.

Tarpaulins are complex composite-like materials, typically composed of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as reinforcement material and plasticized/soft polyvinyl chloride (PVC) as coating material. These durable plastics have a wide range of applications going from trailer covers to professional tents and from advertisement banners to biogas membranes. Each year 200 kton of tarpaulins enter the EU market, 65% of this volume , corresponding to ca. 200 Mio m2, being produced in the EU. After their functional lifetime, which ranges from a few months up to 30 years, over 99% of tarpaulins currently end up as landfill or are being incinerated as today’s recycling technologies are insufficient. The target of RETAIN is to contribute to the final ambition of having by 2036 at least 90% of circular tarpaulins use (re-used, remanufactured or recycled). To reach our ambition, we will further develop various recycling technologies (i.e. mechanical, physical, and selective dissolution) and demonstrate circular business practices (advanced collection, monitoring, sorting, repair/reuse/recycling and conversion of post-production and end-of-life tarpaulins) at TRL8 scale at three DEMO locations in the EU. Additionally, we will develop and implement an efficient decision-making mechanism for process and lifecycle optimization such as the RETAIN gate control procedure for post-industrial and end-of-life tarpaulins. Finally, we will implement a digital product passport (DPP) for tarpaulins to ensure traceability, support certification and quality validation, quantify environmental, social, and economic impacts, incorporate learning and training activities, contribute to relevant standards, and connect with other recycling initiatives in the EU and abroad.