The central element of the strategy for plastics is that ten million tons of recycled plastics are to flow into the European market in new products by 2025 - in 2016, it was still less than four million tons. Only 5.3 million tons of plastic material entered EU recycling plants in 2016. After the recycling process, the yield of recycled plastics is usually reduced by half again. It is therefore important to significantly increase both the collection rate and the yield and to feed more collected material into the plants so that it is not incinerated, landfilled or exported. It is also important to boost demand for recycled plastic, particularly in higher value applications such as electrical and electronic equipment (EEE). Recycled plastics are currently mainly used in construction (46%), packaging (24%) and agriculture (13%) - and only 2% of recyclates currently end up in WEEE. This corresponds to around 80,000 tons of recycled plastics in new electrical and electronic devices - the theoretical market potential in the EU is around 2,100,000 tons per year.

This is where the Increace project comes in. This project, in which the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM is involved among others, aims to increase the use of recycled plastics in various products by means of innovative and interdisciplinary solutions along the recycling value chain. This systemic framework is embedded in the EEE context.

With the use of plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), the Increace project addresses areas in which the use of recycled plastic materials is still marginal today: the project focuses on five use cases that cover sometimes complex aspects in the EEE sector such as food contact, medical applications, electrostatic discharge (ESD) and UL94 flammability standards as well as high-tech plastic components in electrical and electronic equipment. In order to master the technical, economic and legal challenges, Increace brings together stakeholders from various sectors such as researchers, recyclers, product designers, component and EEE manufacturers, software developers, an extended producer responsibility system and consultants. Technologies and methods from the different disciplines are combined to demonstrate that targeted measures along the entire value chain are an effective solution for using more post-consumer plastics in EEE.

The project partners are developing data-based sorting systems that prevent potentially hazardous materials from entering the plastics recycling loop. They are also combining complementary recycling technologies (mechanical, chemical and solvent-based) to increase the overall recycling yield. The traceability of materials plays a crucial role in this. Increace therefore relies on an innovative blockchain approach. The entire concept is applied to specific case studies and then validated. The effects of systematic transformations in the plastics industry will also be analyzed from an economic, regulatory, technological and material perspective. In addition, the project aims to encourage people and communities to strengthen their own role in the transition to a circular economy and circular plastics - for example by optimizing the collection of plastic waste and increasing the demand for products that use recycled plastics. In the further course, the effectiveness of the acquired knowledge can be increased through targeted suggestions for standardization (e.g. definition of recyclates, traceability and testing procedures, quality control, assessment of applicability for certain products) in the context of political decision-making as well as for the active and comprehensive involvement of all relevant stakeholders as actors in the transformation process towards the plastics cycle.

Over the next few months, the project partners will define technical requirements and the quantities of plastic waste required for the production of recycled products, identify stakeholders and value chains for the individual case studies and then identify suitable recycling technologies for each product line.

The Increace project partners are:

• - Fraunhofer Society for the Promotion of Applied Research (Fraunhofer IZM coordinator, Fraunhofer IVV project partner)
• - Vlaamse instelling voor technologisch onderzoek (VITO)
• - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - KU Leuven
• - Pezy Group
• - Plastika Skaza
• - Vorwerk Elektrowerke GmbH
• - Neste Oyj
• - Partners for Innovation
• - Mirec
• - Cabka Spain Sociedad Limitada
• - PAS Germany GmbH
• - University of Maastricht
• - SAP SE
• - EGEN
• - Philips Electronics Nederland
• - Erion Compliance Organization S.c. a r.l.

The Increace project is funded by the European Commission's Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) under the Horizon Europe Cluster 4 program.