Additive Manufacturing (AM) market has grown with trends higher than 20% every year in the last 10 years. Their fast uptake is due to different innovative factors such as no shape limits in manufacturing process, full customisation on the single artefact, localised production and no waste material. In particular the ability to print any shape allows to design the products not following the constricting conventional manufacturing processes but just focalising on their function. This “Design for Function” feature is one of the main drivers for AM uptake on a wider scale production and the limited number of “functional” materials that can be printed or the limit in controlling gradient and surface properties are showing to be an important barrier. This is particularly true in manufacturing of tissue engineering (TE) scaffolds where the technology has a promising growth over the last decade. Scaffolds production for tissue regeneration is one of the main fields where the “Design for Function” feature of AM make the difference relative to the other production techniques if in the production process all the needed “Functions” can be introduced: mechanics, geometry (porosity and shape), biomaterial, bio-active molecules and surface chemical groups. The FAST project aims to integrate all these “Functions” in the single AM process. This integration will be obtained by the hybridisation of the 3D polymer printing with melt compounding of nanocomposites with bio-functionalised fillers directly in the printing head and atmospheric plasma technologies during the printing process itself. Final objective of the project is to realize a demonstrator of the proposed hybrid AM technology in order to achieve a small pilot production of scaffolds for bone regeneration with the novel smart features to be tested in some in-vivo trials.

Various activities address the WEEE value chain in order to reduce waste generation and enhance the sustainable resource management through use of recycled materials instead of their virgin counterparts. While the system for metals recycling is already well established, the rising volumes of waste plastics point to stalemates in the current plastics economy, which hamper its shift to a more circular model. Although there are individual efforts to improve the collection and recycling of WEEE plastics, the plastics value chain is still too fragmented and WEEE recycled plastics seem unattractive material for the end-user. To shift towards circular economy a systematic transformation is required, involving all actors in the value chain and encompassing the entire lifecycle of plastic materials. While substantially reducing the WEEE plastics generation and enhancing the use of recycled plastics in new applications, PolyCE will demonstrate the feasibility of circular plastics supply and value chain. In particular, PolyCE will elaborate harmonized set of technical requirements addressing the entire value chain and develop grade system for recycled plastics according to their material properties and final application suitability. Accordingly, PolyCE will strengthen the market for recycled plastics through an online platform integrating the different plastic grades. In parallel, the technical and economic feasibility as well as environmental benefits of using recycled plastics will be validated in several electronics demonstrators. In addition, PolyCE will provide Guidelines for designing new electronics products with recycled plastics. The project’s impact will be scaled up by involving target cities and their green public procurement initiatives; by EU-wide information and awareness raising campaigns. PolyCE will establish a feedback loop from the research activities, provide policy input regarding technical feasibilities and policy conflicts from technical perspective