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.

Widespread use of hydrogen as an energy carrier is a key priority for the EU, in order to achieve its climate and energy transition targets. Developing sustainable, efficient and safe hydrogen storage technologies has, however, proved challenging. MOST-H2, in full alignment with the requirements of HORIZON-CL4-2021-RESILIENCE-01-17, proposes an integrated multiscale lab-to-tank approach to develop, validate and demonstrate innovative, low cost cryo-adsorptive hydrogen storage, using monolithic Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) adsorbents, with an optimal combination of volumetric and gravimetric capacity, but also a small environmental footprint. Advanced synthetic strategies and sophisticated computational techniques, including molecular simulation and machine learning, will be combined in a cyclic materials development approach, to deliver new high performance, sustainable-by-design MOF adsorbents. The main aim is to computationally design, then synthesise and validate experimentally, ultra porous MOFs with usable storage capacities above 10 wt% and 50 g/L on a materials basis, at an operating pressure below 100 bar. This represents an essential step towards more efficient, intrinsically safer and cost effective storage solutions, compared to conventional hydrogen storage technologies. An important part of the project will be devoted to developing and upscaling monolithic forms of optimal MOF materials to allow easy integration into a cryo-adsorption storage tank, specifically designed for this purpose, which will be tested in a TRL 5 environment. The outcomes, coupled with full life cycle analysis and techno-economic assessment of MOST-H2 technology, with a view to selected end uses (rail and road applications), will form the basis for elaborating future market penetration plans through a solid horizontal dissemination and exploitation strategy.

TREASoURcE will innovatively circulate currently incinerated, exported, landfilled or dumped plastic and biobased side and waste streams by deploying systemic circular economy (CE) solutions. The systemic CE solutions will integrate the two main elements of TREASoURcE: stakeholder engagement demonstrations (SE-DEMOs) and key value chain demonstrations (KVC-DEMOs). The DEMOs support chosen territory clusters in introducing CE practices to their citizens and businesses to help 1) decouple from use of fossil virgin resources and excess raw material consumption, 2) increase resilience (self-sufficiency, value chain security, environment and nature), 3) decrease GHG emissions and contribute to achieve climate neutral economies. Climate change, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity are major global threats that require urgent collaborative actions across industry, sectors, cities and regions, communities and citizens. Half of total GHG emissions and more than 90 % of biodiversity loss come from resource extraction and processing. Global consumption of materials, especially biomass, fossil fuels, metals and minerals are expected to double by 2060 and annual waste generation is estimated to increase by 70 % by 2050. TREASoURcE focuses on demonstrating the CE solutions in cities and regions located in the Nordics (Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark), and they will be replicated in the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Poland and Germany (of the Baltic Sea Region). The combination of the cities and regions will enable large reach and bigger impact and boost the replicability and scalability potential of the CE solutions. A common issue of the regions’ material circulation is low and decentralised material volumes and resulting challenges in feasibility, and bottlenecks have been high risk investments due challenges in securing sufficient feedstock (quality and quantity). However, regional strengths lie in ambitious climate and environmental targets.