CIRC-PACK project aims at more sustainable, efficient, competitive, less fossil fuel dependence, integrated and interconnected plastic packaging value chain. To this end, three case studies will work in developing, testing and validating better system-wide economic and environmental outcomes by i) decoupling the chain from fossil feedstocks, (ii) reducing the negative environmental impact of plastic packaging; and (iii) creating an effective after-use plastics economy. All in all, the work will be supported by non-technological analysis and advanced methodological analysis (including circular economy and industrial symbiosis principles) which will trigger a broadly deployment of the tested solutions. CIRC-PACK project will provide breakthrough biodegradable plastics using alternative biobased raw materials, which will have an instrumental role to play in the subsequence steps of the plastic value chain. In addition, eco-design packaging for improving and end-of-life multilayer and multicomponent packaging will be technologically advanced and adapted also to the new materials produced. Thus these developments will also contribute with a great impact in the packaging footprint, and increasing the biobased content and using compostable materials. Lastly, a multi-sectorial cascaded approach along plastic packaging value chain will be applied with critical impacts in other value chains beyond the targeted plastic packaging value chain. The overall outcome of the project will facilitate the transition from the current linear plastic packaging value chain to circular economy principles.

Waste production and resource use is increasing for electric and electronic consumer products. At the same time many critical materials cannot be recovered in recycling processes. Therefore a promising strategy would be to lengthen the lifetimes of these products in order to get closer to a Circular Economy. The project PROMPT is going to support the development of more durable and longer lasting products by lowering the asymmetry of information between consumer and manufacturer and thereby to allow consumers to make better choices. This is achieved by the development of an integral testing programme for electric and electronic consumer products that takes into account the main key issues of product failures and premature obsolescence: • Product durability and reliability • Adaptability, upgradability, and reparability • User behaviour and market PROMPT takes a multi-stakeholder approach by including different consumer, test, repair and research organisations in the consortium who will carry out the work. Consequently, results will be achieved that are viable for different stakeholders and independent from manufacturers. With the help of an Advisory Board, additional stakeholder input will be gathered. The board will consist of experts from industry, retail, design, environmental, science and consumer sectors. A baseline of research will be established by collecting empirical data on technical issues, design shortcomings, market obstacles and replacement causes for premature obsolescence. These results will give input to the development of a range of specific testing methods addressing the three fields of issues outlined above. The results will be synthesized in an integral testing programme for premature obsolescence that will be validated and benchmarked through test cases. Results will be analysed and prepared to give validated input to standardisation, product design, consumer communication and policy recommendations.

CLEAR 2.0 - enabling Consumers to be Engage with and Adopt Renewable energy technologies. 2.0- is a new project that builds on the learning of an EU funded project IEE13-588 CLEAR. It will actively guide consumers in the energy market and enable them to be more aware, active players, save money and easily become "prosumers". The Consortium will accompany consumers through all the stages leading to the purchase and the correct efficient use of domestic renewable and low-carbon energy technologies. The CLEAR 2.0 project will focus as well on changing behaviour and optimisation of existing installations. The main needs of a home, including heating/cooling and electricity production (including storage and monitoring systems) will be addressed through a consumer-centric approach and actions that will lead to the changing behaviour and form collective consumer groups to support the purchase of renewable energy technologies such as photovoltaic installations, batteries, pellet stoves and heat pumps for heating and cooling. The three major barriers (awareness, behaviour and price) to the investment in RES will be directly addressed, having as a result a higher consumer engagement. BEUC and the consumers organisation focus their advocacy work on relevant legislative developments in order to overcome existing barriers and facilitate consumers’ participation in the energy market. It will distil policy lessons to create a favourable and stable national and European policy framework for the benefit of all European consumers.

Action on circularity is not taken when information and evidence is not available across the life cycle chain. The CircThread project's main objective is to unlock access to data now in silo’s, and enhancing it as decision information for actors across and outside the extended product life cycle. To do this CircThread will deliver a Circular Digital Thread methodology, a framework for facilitating information flow exchanges across the extended life cycle chain of Products, Components, their Materials and Chemicals data, and related Circularity, Environmental, Social and Economic Information. The core is to create data linkages between product chain, value chain, asset chain and life cycle chains based on a Product information Catalogue, and enable information exchanges via data contracts governed by secure and reliable management standards. The project will implement the system in Cloud Platforms in 3 demonstration clusters in Italy, Slovenia and Spain rolled-out across the entire extended life cycle chain of home appliances (incl. washing machines and dish washers) and home energy systems (incl. boilers, solar-PV systems and batteries) to test 7 circularity use cases and associated business models. The expected impact for the work programme is to enable improved decision taking accelerating Circularity and Carbon emissions reductions including: i) Enhanced life extensions of products by better understanding of in use failures and maintenance needs, ii) improved understanding of the quality of end-of-life products for spare parts buy-backs to support right to repair, iii) improved assessment of circularity routes by waste management and recycling companies by delivering enhanced product composition data, iv) improved materials and chemicals tracing of products and components for safer products and identifying Critical Raw Materials cycles, v) Empowering decisions by citizens and citizen organisations by providing direct access to product performance information.

Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 aims to promote the uptake of more efficient energy-related products, repealing Directive 2010/30/EU and the first Directive 92/75/EEC. This regulation that will enter into force at the beginning of 2020 will allow a rescaling of the current energy label of products. The rescaling will create many difficulties amongst consumers as well as amongst market actors (retailers, distributors and manufacturers). BELT has the objective to facilitate the transition period informing and supporting all stakeholders and to reduce to a minimum errors at all levels of the value chain from manufacturer to consumer. Furthermore BELT aims to promote the new label on two key levels: primarily raising awareness and informing consumers (citizens but also public and business procurement staff) thus allowing them to make better and more informed choices; and secondly helping manufacturers, distributors and retailers to adapt their practices and use the rescaled labels to push innovation in designing energy efficiency products. BELT will create targeted communication campaigns for all stakeholders, it will organise workshops and events and it will develop training activities. The excellence of BELT relies on its multidisciplinary expertise and geographical coverage able to reach 20,000,000 million European consumers and 5000 market actors. BELT goes beyond its five primary target countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium and Slovenia). It is going to have in fact an impact in other four secondary target countries (Ireland, Croatia, Greece and Lithuania) and at European level thanks to the support of retailers and manufacturers’ associations as well as members of the consortium as BEUC and ICLEI.