Polymers are one of the most used materials in different applications, especially in consumer goods like electronics, and the consumption is only expected to rise globally. In Europe, 25,8 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated annually and less than 30 % is collected for recycling and significant shares are exported from EU to be treated elsewhere. Landfilling (31 %) and incineration (39 %) of plastics is high (together 70 %), and by these treatment options the valuable materials are lost from circulation. It is estimated that 95 % of the value of plastic packaging material, between 70-105 billion EUR, is lost annually to the economy after a very short first-use cycle. The industry is lacking standards and main barriers for efficient uptake of recyclates are due to safety concerns, low quality, and recycling rates. PRIMUS activities will increase the resilience of EU's plastic value chains by securing supply of waste plastics as feedstock and increasing its availability through connecting value chain actors, developing methods to control quality, sampling, and analysis, and improving upgrading knowhow and characterize suitability towards added-value products. PRIMUS will prove legislative compliant, privacy-preserving, cost-efficient and feasible technological pathways for tapping into non-recycled or underutilized plastic waste streams. Validated business cases will lower the risks of future investments into European manufacturing capacity. PRIMUS will address one of the core challenges identified in the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, the presence of hazardous substances (brominated flame retardants) and how to effectively and safely debrominate the waste streams for new product use. PRIMUS will contribute to circulating underutilised or non-recycled streams and create further impact by supporting additional production of 0,2 Mtonnes of rHIPS, rPC/ABS, rEPDM and rTPE, which is approximately 6 % of the expected growth of European recyclate market 2018-2024.

1.2 Million tons of mixed plastics arise from Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) treatment in Europe and this quantity is still growing. WEEE plastics often contain undesired additives that hamper recycling in Europe. 75% of WEEE is currently exported to Asia where it is recycled to secondary plastics containing undesired (hazardous) substances or ending up in landfill where leaching occurs. Hence for WEEE plastics a closed loop solution is needed. PLAST2bCLEANED’s aim is to develop a recycling process for WEEE plastics in a technically feasible, environmentally sound and economically viable manner. To fulfil this aim, PLAST2bCLEANED addresses the recycling of the most common WEEE plastics acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and high impact polystyrene (HIPS) that contain up to 20wt% brominated flame retardants (BFR) and up to 5wt% of the synergist antimony trioxide (ATO). PLAST2bCLEANED will close three loops: (1) polymer, (2) bromine, and (3) ATO. Key technologies developed within the project are: (1) improved sorting of HIPS and ABS that contain BFR from other polystyrene and ABS fractions; (2) dissolution of WEEE plastics in superheated solvents; (3) separation of additives to concentrate BFR and ATO fractions for recycling; (4) energy efficient recovery of solvent and of polymer. The developed technology will be integrated in a pilot facility with capacity of 2 kg/hr (TRL 5/6) delivering polymer samples. The developed technology can be applied to similar waste streams from other sectors, e.g. automotive. The combination of improved sorting and use of superheated solvents offers an economic and environmental advantage. First calculations indicate a sound business case. The consortium is well equipped to develop this technology and consist of partners to cover the whole value chain.

The CloseWEEE project integrates three interlinked research and innovation areas for an improved, resource-efficient recycling of polymer materials and critical raw materials from electrical and electronics equipment (EEE): (1) Efficient and effective disassembly of EEE is key for high quality material fractions, separation of materials but also for reuse of components and parts. An information system for dismantlers will be developed, accessing webbased dismantling instructions, to ease the dismantling process, reduce destruction of reusable parts and components and to allow for a deeper dismantling level for better economics of the Recycling process. (2) Developing resource-efficient and innovative solutions for closing the loop of post-consumer high-grade plastics from WEEE, for new EEE through advanced recovery of valuable plastic streams which do not have a recycling system yet, and subsequent replacement of halogenated flame retardants by halogen-free flame retardants in new EEE. (3) Improved recycling of Lithium-ion batteries through increasing the recovery rates of cobalt and researching a recovery technology for the critical raw material graphite from those batteries. These technology innovations in the various stages of the EEE recycling value chain are complemented by research on reusing the recovered polymer fractions in new EEE, defining product design measures in favour of an optimised recycling eco-system, embedding related product design criteria in EU policy measures and global green procurement activities. These activities will support effectively the objectives of the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials.