The Bio Innovation of a Circular Economy for Plastics (BioICEP) is a pan European-Chinese collaboration formed to reduce the burden of plastic waste in the environment. Different mixed plastic pollution environments are represented, with specific partners selected which have the expertise and facilities to carry out the necessary technical innovations. A number of innovative booster technologies are at the core of this solution accentuating, expediting, and augmenting mixed plastics degradation to levels far in excess of those current achievable. Our approach is The Bio Innovation of a Circular Economy for Plastics (BioICEP) consortium is a pan European-Chinese collaborative formed to reduce the burden of plastic waste in the environment. The countries have been selected to represent different mixed plastic pollution environments, with specific partners selected which have the expertise and facilities to carry out the necessary technical innovations. Three innovative booster technologies are at the core of this solution accentuating, expediting, and augmenting plastics degradation to levels far in excess of those current achievable. Our approach is a triple-action depolymerisation system where plastic waste will be broken down in three consecutive processes: 1) mechano-biochemical disintegration processes, including a new proprietary sonic-green-chemical technology to reduce the polymer molecular weight of the base polymer to make it amenable to biodegradation; 2) biocatalytic digestion, with enzymes enhanced through a range of innovative techniques including accelerated screening through novel fluorescent sensor and directed evolution; and 3) microbial consortia developed from best in class single microbial strains, which combined leads to highly efficient degradation of mixed plastic waste streams. The outputs from this degradation process will be used as building blocks for new polymers or other bioproducts to enable a new plastic waste-based circular economy.

PROMISCES will identify how industrial pollution prevents the deployment of the circular economy (CE) in the EU and which strategies help overcome key bottlenecks to deliver the ambitions of the European Green Deal and Circular Economy Action Plan. PROMISCES considers specific CE routes including (i) semi-closed water cycles for drinking water supply at urban and catchment scale; (ii) wastewater reuse for irrigation in agriculture; (iii) nutrient recovery from sewage sludge; (iv) material recovery from dredged sediment and (v) land remediation for safe reuse in urban areas. To reach its goals, PROMISCES will: - Develop new analytical methods and toxicological tools to provide data on persistent, mobile (PM) substances (i.e. PFAS and other industrial chemicals) in complex environmental matrices. - Explore sources and environmental pathways of PM substances released from (i) soil; (ii) sediment; (iii) landfills; (iv) wastewater treatment plants and via (v) urban runoff into relevant environmental compartments (soil, sediment, surface water, groundwater). - Assess fate and transport pathways within the different CE routes and evaluate the impacts of corrective measures. - Improve the assessment and management of human health risks from drinking water and agricultural products. - Develop and demonstrate cost-efficient and sustainable technologies for the removal of PM substances from different media. - Translate PROMISCES results into guidance for efficient and feasible management of PM substances and recommendations for the implementation of relevant EU policy strategies and directives. - Integrate the results into a decision support framework which considers resource recovery and water reuse and supports chemical management decisions with regards to i) stakeholders and societal demands; ii) PM chemical properties iii) technical solutions to prevent, mitigate and remediate industrial pollution and iv) the whole life cycle of current and future chemicals.

ONE-BLUE will provide an integrated assessment of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and their impacts, will develop new monitoring tools, and will provide an advanced understanding of the combined effects of CECs and climate change (CC) on the different marine ecosystems and their biodiversity. The following objectives are defined: • Improve the current knowledge of the concentrations, profiles, fate, behaviour, and effects of CECs, in the different marine compartments and ecosystems through three case studies (Atlantic and Arctic oceans and the Mediterranean Sea) and develop safety guidelines and protocols for future CECs monitoring in marine ecosystems. • Provide an advanced understanding of possible interaction between CC and CECs in marine ecosystems with studies under controlled conditions in marine mesocosms. • Develop a database (DB), the CECsMarineDB, following FAIR principles, with a database management system (DBMS) to collect the data generated in ONE-BLUE and capitalize data from other projects and existing DBs. A graphical user interface (GUI) will be developed and used for data exploration and demonstration of the fate and behaviour of CECs in a changing environment. • Provide new solutions in support of the implementation of relevant EU policies; (i) a series of new approach methodologies (NAMs) to improve the ecotoxicity assessment of CECs in marine ecosystems; (ii) a tiered effect-directed approaches (EDA) combining toxicological assessment and chemical analysis; (iii) an advanced ultrasonic system for sampling and enrichment micro/nanoplastics from seawater; (iv) a remote autonomous sensor to assess CECs in marine waters in quasi-real-time; a decision support system (DSS) based on machine and deep learning strategies to assess and forecast combined effects of CC and CECs in marine ecosystems. • Disseminate the project results and establish the exploitation plan for the developed technologies.