Circular flows for solid waste in urban environment (Processes4Planet Partnership) (IA)

Hubs for circularity for solid waste in urban environment tackles a fundamental issue of end of life materials representing a huge amount and broad range of solid wastes. Solid waste are intended here as process industry, manufacturing industry, construction industry waste and solid urban waste (consumer waste, End-of-Life waste). Solid waste in general is one of the biggest waste streams in Europe, accounting for more than 30% of all waste generated in the EU (Dec.2019 data)[[https://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/index.htm]], re-using and re-cycling most of that could cut significantly the emissions caused by the mining and manufacturing needed to produce those materials in the first place and as such represents an important decarbonisation potential. There is a need of innovative solution engaging waste management actors in novel value chains to valorise a significant part of those wastes, bringing full attention to upcycling back to secondary materials instead of down cycling of low re-use.

Projects are expected to address:

• Management and processing of waste streams through e.g. collection, disassembly, sorting, purification, refining, concentration, processing (e.g. thermal, mechanical), recycling technologies (especially chemical recycling), exchanging or preparation, for the valorisation of waste to be used as feedstock for other plants and companies across sectors and/or across value chains;
• Process (re-)design and adaptation to build a new circular value chain including energy, water and material flow, infrastructure and logistics;
• Investigate the availability and distribution of “waste” resources and logistic to ensure proper input of the specified material of the right quality and quantity to feed the new process in time;
• Integration of novel sensing technology, IoT and digital tools for the classification and sorting of solid waste streams to enable their efficient utilisation with as little downgrading as possible;
• New approach to end-of life materials removing the usual barriers of exploitation, enabling novel symbiotic interactions; unification of administration procedures, data sharing and preservation of data confidentiality;
• Define assessment methodologies and evaluate KPIs to measure the performance of symbiosis (SRL) and including environmental, economic and social impacts; ;
• Life cycle assessment and life cycle cost analysis should take into account existing sustainability standards (e.g. ISO 14000) and existing best practices;
• Assessment of the economic, circularity and climate benefits;
• Study social aspects of the community and its improvement through I-US where demonstration is located, whilst also considering a gender and inclusiveness perspective;
• Create societal awareness through a participative approach locally and more broadly, highlighting and communicating political and regulatory obstacle between regions/countries.
• Connect to the ECoP for knowledge sharing: know-how, challenges and recommendations on technological and non-technological aspects;

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination. Interoperability for data sharing should be addressed.

Clustering and cooperation with other selected projects under this call and others in Horizon Europe, with European initiatives (as for example: Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) and European Circular Economy Stakeholder Panel (ECESP)), as well as building on existing projects,[[e.g. Sharebox, Scaler, CIRCLEAN network, JRC EIGL, etc.]] are strongly encouraged; see also Industrial Symbiosis Report of March 2020[[Study and Portfolio Review of Cluster of Projects on Industrial Symbiosis

https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f26dfd11-6288-11ea-b735-01aa75ed71a1]].

This topic implements the co-programmed European partnership Processes4Planet.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement