The Mediterranean Sea and its surrounding regions support a diverse variety of essential socioeconomic activities. It is one of the highly exploited water ways and the influence of anthropogenic activities on its marine habitats and ecosystems has grown significantly since the industrial revolution. Because of this, the Mediterranean Sea basin is very vulnerable to chemical contamination and buildup. To safeguard the Mediterranean Sea basin from contaminants for emerging concerns (CoEC), iMERMAID will integrate, coordinate, and synergize innovative preventive, monitoring, and remediation solutions. iMERMAID will build an evidence-based multidimensional framework that will guide policymaking and transform societal perceptions to reduce CoEC usage, emissions, and pollution. Furthermore, next generation sensor and remediation solutions will be developed within iMERMAID to monitor and remove prioritized chemicals from its source while reducing upstream pollution. iMERMAID builds an ideal interdisciplinary team by bringing together prominent SMEs, researchers, regulators, and innovation professionals who have been essential in improving the knowledge and awareness of CoEC. Beyond state-of-the-art techniques, iMERMAID will strive to strengthen regulations against CoEC, expand economic possibilities and competitiveness, improve the standard of living for EU residents, while preventing the accumulation of chemical pollution in the Mediterranean Sea basin. iMERMAID will empower the efforts to create a zero pollution, contaminant free waters by enabling the Chemical Strategy's goals to become a practical reality.

>90% of dissolved metals are removed from circulation. 500 000 tons of hazardous heavy metals released to the environment each year. €50 billion worth of valuable metals such as gold, silver, copper, and platinum dumped every year in the growing mountain of electronic waste that pollutes the planet. €1 trillion worth of metals dumped as mining waste, with €20 billion added each year. These are just a few examples that illustrate how the world is losing valuable resources and polluting the Earth simply because industrial companies lack proper tools for metal recovery from wastewater. Today’s prevailing practice is to achieve minimal compliance with regulations by purifying the wastewater so that most of the dissolved metals, especially those defined as Critical Raw Materials are unrecoverably wasted. But if we want to achieve a circular economy and ensure sufficient supply, neglecting the resource recovery opportunities arising from improved wastewater management is nothing less than unthinkable. To address this challenge, we have developed 4D Scavenger, a novel system for selective recovery of valuable and hazardous metals from industrial wastewater. Compared to existing solutions, our technology combines unprecedented selectivity with faster reaction kinetics. This reduces the cost of metal recovery by up to 10x and thus makes the recovery of metals financially feasible for more types of metals, industrial processes, and smaller companies. We achieve this with a completely new metal recovery technology based on chemically functional porous filters. The technology uses the selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printing technique to print the filter-like 4D Scavengers using (1) polymer powder such as PA12 that form the porous structure and (2) chemically active components such as chelating resins, ion exchange resins, adsorbents or molecular compounds that bind the desired metal ions to the 4D Scavenger.

REMHub project proposal will create a cutting-edge digital innovation hub propelling EU excellence for Rare Earth Elements (REEs ) and magnets. REMHub will develop test and pilot novel technologies for exploration and primary production of rare earths and recovering rare earths from side streams to enhance supply security of REEs in EU. In addition, Re-X (Recycle, Reuse, refurbishment and repurposing) technologies for rare earths and valuable metals from end-of-life products as well as electric machine design for easier permanent magnet recycling will be developed. The project will also identify and engage relevant stakeholders for developing REE value chain in EU. In addition, in the innovation hub will ensure that the novel technologies developed in the project will be commercialized and offered as services in a digital platform. The project will also have dynamic communication and dissemination with the aim to involve and engage the public to develop trust and awareness related to REEs as well as to build capacity in EU. The hub targets transformative material sourcing for REEs and REE magnets, including traceability, digital twinning, and digital passport. The project partners cover the entire REE value chain starting from mineral exploration, through mineral processing and refining to metal production and magnet making as well as recycling. The project incorporates safe and sustainable by design framework (SSbD) including design for Re-X (recycling, re-use, refurbishment, repurposing) approach integrating easy dismantling and circularity properties. REMHub will significantly improve the supply security of REEs in the EU and with the digital innovation hub considerably accelerate the development of technologies and services to faster and easier market entry.