Europe's ambitious energy and climate goals are heavily dependent on critical raw materials such as Rare Earth Elements (REEs). The largest end-user of REEs is the permanent magnet (PM) industry for electric mobility and renewable energy technologies. The growth in those strategic sectors till 2050 is expected to increase the demand of Neodymium (Nd) and Dysprosium (Dy) by ~4 and ~12 times, respectively. However, Europe depends 100% on REEs imports and there are no market-ready substitutes. Despite the fact that significant amounts of EoL products containing REE-based PMs are collected in Europe, the current recycling processes do not allow PMs recovery, and therefore they are lost downstream. To face this challenge, the REEPRODUCE project aims at setting up, for the first time, a resilient and complete European REEs-recycling value chain, at industrial scale for the recovery of REEs at competitive cost compared to REEs primary production in China (at least 25% cheaper) with environmentally friendly and socially sustainable technologies. REEPRODUCE will capitalize on the knowledge generated in previous projects and aim to solve all remaining technical challenges along the value chain to construct pilots able to produce 70 t of PMs per year from variety of EoL products bearing Nd-based PMs. Additionally it will demonstrate the conversion of PMs extracted from many different EoL products into high purity Rare Earth Elements Oxide (REO)-mixtures and Rare Earth Elements Alloy (REA) that will be used in the manufacturing of new PMs with performances similar to those manufactured with virgin REEs-intensive materials. This project is formed by key partners covering the whole value chain, including EoL products recyclers, metal recyclers, manufacturers of equipment for recycling, producers of REEs-intensive material and PMs, developers of technologies successfully proven in previous projects, and experts in dissemination, communication and exploitation.

C-SERVEES aims to boost a resource-efficient circular economy in the electrical and electronic (E&E) sector through the development, testing, validation and transfer of new circular economic business models (CEBMs) based on systemic eco-innovative services that include: (1) eco-leasing of EEE, (2) product customization, (3) improved WEEE management, and (4) ICT services to support the other eco-services. ICT tools (relying on QR codes) will be developed as the driver of the proposed eco-innovative services to take full advantage of the potential and synergies of two major revolutions of our time: the circular economy and the Industry 4.0. The project will thus contribute to transform the E&E sector into circular and 4.0, raising new opportunities for end-users (such as their involvement in design or the access to a product as a service) and for social and solidarity economy (conducted by NGOs, like EMAUS, which employ people at risk of social exclusion to repair and prepare WEEE for re-use). The techno-economic, environmental and social viability of the new CEBMs will be validated through demonstrations dealing with four target products belonging to different EEE categories: large household appliances, IT equipment, telecommunications equipment, and consumer equipment. These EEE categories together account for 77% of WEEE collected in the EU. The project will result in an estimated economic benefit of 57.03 M€ over the period 2022-2026, which taking into account the project budget (8.03 M€) yields a ROI ~ 7.1. Specifically, the project will generate in the mid-term an economic benefit of 28.4 M€/year, with about 355 green employees (including direct and indirect jobs) and a total reduction of 2,620 tonnes CO2 eq/year. C-SERVEES (10 Member States and Turkey, including industry, end-users and researchers, ensures that strategic, design and implementation decisions) will be in line with business realities and set the foundation for realistic market-ready solutions.

This project aims to develop and implement a circular economy approach for sustainable products and services through their value and supply chains. Three new circular economy business models will be developed including (i) co-creation of products and services, (ii) sustainable consumption, and (iii) collaborative recycling and reuse. The Co-creation of Products/Services model will bring end-users closer to the design and manufacturing phases by identifying consumer preferences via Big-data online mining product reviews and evaluating product specifications and prototypes via Living Lab to customise the end-user requirements. Benefited from the co-creation features, sets of sustainable production methods will be implemented and new products/services will be created. The Sustainable Consumption model will develop a method to calculate the eco-points of products based on the outcome of FP7 myEcoCost project, assess product environment footprints (PEF), provide a traceability solution to monitor product’s sustainability along the value chain, and support end-users and stakeholders to actively implement the circular economy via awareness raising and knowledge sharing activities. The Collaborative Recycling/Reuse model will develop a system for stakeholders to interact with each other to facilitate the use/reuse of end-of-life products and reduce waste, and implement the eco-credits awarding scheme to encourage people to recycle/reuse. This project will be demonstrated at a large scale in electrical and electronic products and farming/agri-foods sectors, provide an effective means to communicate with wide communities to disseminate the project outcome, and involve a large number of stakeholders along value and supply chains throughout the project lifetime, including end-users, producers, researchers and civil society. An ICT platform will be developed to support the development, implementation, demonstration, communication and dissemination.

RESTORE represents a pioneering research and development initiative, committed to the challenge of designing, developing and deploying a novel holistic and scalable battery recycling process. RESTORE is dedicated to the safe pre-processing of End-of-life (EoL) battery from Electric vehicles (EV) and domestic Lithium-ion Batteries (LIBs), and aims at developing innovative, safe, cost effective and scalable solution for the separation, recovery, purification, upcycling, and validation of materials and metals, to be directly transformed into new battery precursor and functional materials. The proposed solution will shorten the recycling process, while unlocking the recovery of highly valuable materials, currently lost in conventional recycling process, such as the electrolyte, including both the electrolyte salt and solvents, organic binder, graphite and Cathode Active Material (CAM). The project is driven by key industries in Europe, supported by renown research centres, to ensure battery recycling industry will be able to reach the battery directive, and 2030 Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) targets. The concept is based on three building blocks: i) Improving upstream processes for the sorting of batteries and the liberation of non-battery materials from EV battery packs and prohibit them from entering in the downstream process, while maximizing their valorisation, ii) Improving pre-processing of battery materials to effectively separate active and non-active battery materials, ensuring high-purity outputs. iii) Improving the downstream process to efficiently separate all battery materials and refine them to battery-grade standards, to be directly reinjected into the battery production value chain. Finally, with the support of LCA and LCCA through SSbD assessment, the most promising routes based on recycled materials will be validated on coin cells. The project's outcomes will be effectively communicated, disseminated, and exploited with stakeholders engagement.