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PRS, an industrial repair system for large series of reusable plastic articles in a circular economy

Project description

New repair system for reusable plastic items

Plastic waste is a major environmental threat – not all items are recycled. Such is the case with returnable transport packaging (RTP). It consists of pallets and crates that are used in a wide range of industrial, commercial and agricultural sectors generating billions of items per year. In addition, municipal solid waste (MSW) containers used in the EU for the collection of recyclable waste have a limited range of life and when damaged are discarded. The EU-funded PRS project proposes a technology developed by Plastic Repair System that repairs the reusable plastic items. The technology is cost-effective as repairing costs represent less than one third of the price of a new item. The recovered plastic articles are fully operable and reliable.

Objective

In Europe, there are 1.9 billion items of plastic Returnable Transport Packaging (RTP), which are plastic pallets and crates that are used across various sectors, including the automotive, beverage, logistic and pooling services. Also in Europe, the number of plastic street containers for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) exceeds twenty million. The average lifetime of these articles ranges from five to ten years. When they break, these items are discarded and replaced with new ones. Discarded items have three destinations: recycling, incineration or as landfill. The owners of these plastic elements barely consider the possibility of their repair.
At Plastic Repair System, we have developed and patented an industrial technology for the repair of reusable plastic articles, which allows their use with total confidence and guarantees, while the cost of repair is less than one third of the new value of the same article. Repairs undertaken with PRS technology have been analysed by independent laboratories that have certified that PRS recovers 100% of the object's functionality and at least 98% of its original strength.
Practical feasibility has been demonstrated in a Phase 1 SMEI project: as a starting point, we have successfully tested our technology with some product references for 6 multinational companies.
PRS2011 is one of the few circular economy solutions in EU with a direct and immediate positive impact in the environment: RTPs reusing is much better and cheaper than recycling. The interest and novelty of this project has been recognized by the EU Commission: PRS awarded in the EU Business Awards Environment, Product&Services (14/11/18).
We have received also interest from four European venture capital funds focused on innovative companies in the circular economy. Project Phase 2 will allow us to complete our technical solution and reach agreements with partners for international expansion.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020

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Coordinator

PLASTIC REPAIR SYSTEM 2011 SL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 546 380,15
Address
AVENIDA SANCHO EL FUERTE 53 BAJO
31007 Pamplona
Spain

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Noreste Comunidad Foral de Navarra Navarra
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 345 364,50

Participants (1)

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