About the project

Objectives

• Provide an assessment of how value chains for plastics, batteries, and biobased materials can be optimized in the territorial clusters, from a national and regional perspective.
• Identify opportunities and challenges for circular strategies identified in value chains of plastics, batteries, and biobased materials from national and regional perspectives.
• Map national and regional material flows and relevant value chains to provide a baseline for the demonstrations and replication in WPs 3-6.

Main activities

• Analysis of the current CE roadmaps, strategies and action plans of the targeted countries, cities, rural areas and regions.
• Material flow and value chain mapping of the plastics, batteries, and biobased waste streams.
• Assessments of the targeted value chains, value creation and value chain optimization.
• Regulatory framework mapping (on EU, national regional and local level) for collection, treatment and recycling of plastics, batteries and processing of biobased side and waste streams.
• Review of state-of-the-art technology and best practices for circular strategies in the targeted value chains, practices and framework for eco-design and circular business models.

Expected impact

• Provide key insights on how current roadmaps and legislative and regulatory frameworks promote a circular economy within plastics, batteries and biobased waste streams in the targeted territories.
• Develop knowledge on the material flows and potential value creation for the different waste streams and their associated value chains.

Objectives

• Achieve transparent decision-making processes and transitions to CE supported by relevant stakeholders.
• Strengthen the decision makers capability of enabling CE.
• Learn from stakeholders and understand their perspectives, perceptions and positions in the CE transition.
• Build knowledge and stakeholder capacity to ensure they understand the benefits of CE and can participate in implementing CE on different stakeholder levels.

Main activities

• The structures for stakeholder engagement will be established by setting up cross-sectorial task forces in 3-4 geographical areas. The aim is to cooperate with a broad range of stakeholders.
• Once the stakeholder cooperation established, concrete cooperative actions will be carried out through five different demonstrations, including activities such as workshops for consumers and industry actors, hackathons, fixing workshops, seminars, procurement recipes, and larger cultural and sports events.

Main outcomes

Work package 2 will develop, test and showcase best practices for engagement and cooperation with consumers, citizens, and communities regarding circular economy. This will result in reports, guidance booklets, procurement recipes, and a range of learning materials supporting CE training.

Objectives

• Efficient plastic collection, sorting and pre-treatment.
• Mechanical recycling of targeted plastic waste streams.
• Chemical recycling technology to treat rejected plastic waste from mechanical recycling.
• Upgrading technologies to final valuable products.

Main activities

• Collection, analysis, pre-treatment and mechanical recycling of feedstock: The feedstock will be collected and characterised using physical and chemical content.
• Thermochemical recycling of currently non-recycled plastic waste: Technical assessment of pyrolysis process and full-scale testing of feedstock pyrolysis, use of catalyst to improve end product.

Expected impact

• Improved mechanical recycling of targeted plastic waste streams.
• Produced data will be used by the waste handling companies to improve their separation techniques for undesirable contaminants in the waste fractions.

Main objectives and activities

• Evaluate possibilities and potential for use of 2nd life EV batteries as energy storage systems.
• Demonstrate functionality and sustainability of 2nd life EV batteries in two demo cases for energy storage for solar power.

Main outcomes

Main outcome of this work package is to demonstrate environmental and economic viability of implementing 2nd life batteries in stationary energy storage systems through evaluating different business models and life cycle analysis. Stationary battery systems will be demonstrated through implementation on two different sites in Norway and Finland and data will be collected to validate the environmental gain.

Expected impact

Contributing with data and knowledge to the Replication Handbook and efficient communication to the public will enable increased implementation of 2nd life battery energy storage systems, ultimately establishing a fully circular battery value chain when these batteries are recycled.

Objectives and main activities

• New value chains and business models for unused biobased side and waste streams demonstrated.
• A local circular bioeconomy model created, tested and validated that is ready for replication.
• A functioning e-market and a digital platform for side and waste streams created.
• A tool created to identify local urban-rural symbiosis models.

Main outcomes

• Functioning circular economy e-marketplace and value chain models.
• Tool for modelling local urban rural symbiosis.
• Model for territorial circular economy.

Expected impact

The work package 5 activities will lead to powering local economies through new circular bioeconomy investments. As a result, there will be new business possibilities for rural producers, and local economies will find resource efficient models for their area. The rural and urban areas will work in cooperation through an adapted local symbiosis model.

Objectives and main activities

• Interpret stakeholder and other relevant analysis results of WP1 and WP2 to realise critical and necessary factors to be taken into consideration in the process to create a replication plan for different target areas.
• Screening of replication target area’s possibilities to gain public and private funding, enhance SME participation, and include other industry value chains related to CE.
• Increase understanding of the created models’ scalability to other CE purposes.
• Case study that includes plans for establishing local plastic waste collection system in the pilot city.

Main outcomes

• A compilation of best replicable CE practices.
• Roadmaps, CE strategies and CE business plans according to the local conditions.
• Logistics and spatial optimisation with adjusted solution for each area.
• TREASoURcE Replication Handbook or replication localisation modelling: a living digital document and guide for public use.

Expected impact

Active collaboration with interested external stakeholders will assure a widespread transfer of information and good practices as well as their uptake throughout TREASoURcE regions and beyond. TREASoURcE demos are all open access and developed so that they are within the project designed, tested and validated and then conceptualised for efficient replication.

Objectives

• Identify in secure way solutions that are ill-suited from sustainability perspective.
• Identify critical success factors and potential risks of existing or planned circular systems.
• Generate and document indicator results for stakeholders to enable opinion formulation and informed decisions making.
• Provide guidance and lessons learned to support a sound transfer and replication of successful circular systems.

Main activities

• Developing a framework for sustainability and circularity assessment that integrates impact indicators for sustainability (in a social, environmental, and economic dimension), performance indicators for circularity, and also context indicators.
• In parallel, an assessment toolset will be created, in close coordination with project stakeholders. The toolset will be tailored to expert and non-expert audiences and is to be further complemented by a guideline for data collection, data curation and data maintenance.
• With the framework, the work package will conduct an analysis of the three main project cases: Circular plastics value chain sustainability assessment, Batteries reuse and recycling value chain assessment, and Biobased waste streams for biogas and fertilizers assessment.

Main outcomes

Work package 7 expects three main outcomes. For one, an assessment framework for sustainability and circular economy of circular systems. Second, expert and non-expert tools and a data pool and guideline for project-specific assessments. Third, applied sustainability assessment of the key value chains in the project. Each of these outcomes will also be captured in an extensive report.

Expected impact

The metrics, tools, and data provided by this work package will help understand whether and how far circular economy systems are indeed sustainable, and thus can be applied for finding best ways to transfer and scale up new and existing circular systems. The project outcomes are applied to existing regional value chains, delivering results and supporting the transferability of circular systems of key value chains in the EU. Assessment results will guide initiatives for improved circularity, efficient management and the valorisation of local resources, leading to e.g. the reduction of GHG emissions. It is expected that by 2035, TREASoURcE will have contributed to 9.5 Mtonnes of GHG emission savings.

Objectives

• Achieving visibility and making TREASoURcE an active and recognised actor in CE in the territories.
• Engaging and reaching out to stakeholders via communication channels and activities.
• Providing communication expertise to the other WPs in organising various stakeholder engagement workshops, campaigns, and events.
• Raising awareness and deepening understanding of circular systemic solutions by offering fact-based results and policy recommendations.Disseminating TREASoURcE results to ensure maximum exploitation and impact.

Main activities

• Design and implementation of the Communication and dissemination plan.
• Establishing and maintaining active exchanges with stakeholders covering all the targeted key value chains via targeted and tailored communication and dissemination content, tools and channels.
• Close collaboration with the replication and exploitation work package (WP6) for maximised impact during and after the project lifetime.
• Active collaboration with other circular economy projects and the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) to enhance knowledge sharing and a wide uptake of the identified solutions in the TREASoURcE territories and beyond.

Main outcomes and expected impact

Effective cross-WP collaboration with the replication and exploitation activities but also other work packages is expected to result in effective and widespread uptake, replication, scalability and visibility of circular systemic solutions at local, regional, national, European and international levels.

Objectives and main activities

• Ensure efficient management, timely and quality results according to the work plan, contractual timeframe and budget.
• Provide financial, legal and administrative guidance.
• Organise the necessary management structures.
• Ensure efficient communication between the European Commission and the consortium.
• Organise the Advisory Board and ensure good communication with AB.
• Continuously quality assurance, proper risk assessment and management.
• Ensure efficient data management under FAIR principles.
• Ethics management.

Main outcomes and expected impact

The main outcomes and expected impact of the coordination and management work package are high-quality project results, and ethically compliant and smooth project execution that is operated within the time and budget restraints of the project plan.