PRIMUS

About the project

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 towards added-value products.

Within the project:

• Technological pathways for non-recycled or underutilized plastic waste streams will be investigated and proved to be legislative compliant, privacy preserving, cost-efficient and feasible.
• The risk of future investments into European manufacturing capacity will be lowered through validated business cases.
• The identification of hazardous substances (brominated flame retardants) and an efficient and safe debromination of the waste streams for new product use will be addressed as one of the core challenges identified in the EU Circular Economy Action Plan.

PRIMUS will validate the developments by producing 4 PRIMUS Demo cases where new added value products will be made from recycled and upgraded nonrecycled or underutilized plastic waste streams. The Demos will support the plastics sector in boosting use of recycled plastics in new products and increasing the added-value loops of recycled plastics by fundamentally addressing the quality and safety requirements. One ambitious aim is to establish an EU-wide accepted definition for a recyclate and decentralised, interoperable and transparent procedures to control quality and safety of recyclates.

Background

Polymers are one of the most used materials in different applications, especially in consumer goods like electronics and packaging, and the consumption is 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 after a very short first-use cycle. Demand for recycled plastics today account for only 6 % of the plastic demand in Europe [1], so the recycled plastics market is rather underdeveloped. The industry is lacking standards and main barriers for efficient uptake of recyclates are due to safety concerns, low quality, and recycling rates.

[1] EC: Plastic waste and recycling in the EU: facts and figures