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The recent Circular Economy Package adopted by the European commission seeks the transition from a linear economy model to a more circular economy model, where products, material and resources maintain their value in time, thus minimizing the waste generation and contributing to the final goal of developing a sustainable, low carbon, resource efficient and competitive EU’s economy[1]. From the number of sectors facing specific challenges in terms of circularity; automotive, construction and other manufactured goods have been identified among those having particularly high potential for adopting circular economy models, thanks mainly to being characterized by products with medium complexity (only minor changes required in technologies and processes) and medium usage periods (products undergoing cycles in the next 15 years)[2], and which however have current low opportunity captured. Furthermore, these industries have in common a relatively high usage of composite materials – which add value to bulk polymers –, however they usually end up being landfilled or incinerated and are considered difficult to recycle. These complex medium-lived products represent 48.6% of the GDP contribution of the manufacturing sector within the EU economy and € 1.44 trillion in final sales in the EU-27. Therefore, EU has identified packaging; food; electronic and electrical equipment; transport; furniture; building and construction sectors as priorities to accelerate the circular economy and where EU policy has a role to play[3]. In terms of volume, 65 B tonnes of raw materials entered the global economic system in 2010—expected to grow to about 82 B tonnes in 2020. In Europe, 2.7 B tonnes of waste were generated in 2010, but only about 40% of that was reused, recycled, or composted and digested and the 70% was minerals while wood and plastics are still significantly below its potential.

ECOBULK through a large scale demonstration effort will contribute to “closing the loop” of composite products in the automotive, furniture and building sectors by promoting greater re-use, upgrade, refurbishment and recycle of products, parts and materials. It will bring opportunities for both the environment and the economy by offering business opportunities along the entire new defined supply and value chains. ECOBULK approach will be based on identifying and promoting commonalities in processes, technologies, products and services ensuring replicability and transferability to other industrial sectors.

ECOBULK aims at implementing a new economy model for composite products in automotive, furniture and building component industrial sectors with high potential of cross-sectorial replicability and transferability by directly addressing and demonstrating key stages (Figure 1) along the entire circular setup:

DESIGN: A Design Circularframework to design modular composite products for three large industries; automotive (car fascia, and internal parts*), furniture (drawers, cabinets, office and library modules*) and building components (decking and fencing*). Upgrading, refurbishment, disassembly and dismantling strategies and behaviour of material and components over multiple lifecycles will be taken into account to extend products’ life and reuse as well as uniform material recycling for reintroduction in the manufacturing lines.

• PRODUCTION: Tackle material formulation to integrate high fraction of recycled materials (up to 60% for plastic composites and 70% for wood based products) while requiring minor tuning in well-established manufacturing technologies to ensure industrial uptake and high cross-sectoral replicability and transferability.  Decision System Support (DSS) and Quality Assurance Systems (QAS) will be implemented along the product stages (from design to end user) and its usage cycle to optimize material selection and manufacturing processes, and therefore contributing to redesign the value chain.
• DISTRIBUTION/COLLECTION: Data management will be employed to improve (reverse) logistics. New reverse logistics need to be put in place to foster recovering products back from consumers or users and put them back into the supply chain.
• BUSINESS MODELS Innovative business models shifting from the rigid ownership to performance-based payment models (e.g. lease, buy-back, sharing and collaborative practices, and product as a service) will offer new opportunities for retailers, collectors and distributors and redefine the entire supply chain, thus, translating the re-use and recycling strategies at product, part  and material levels into attractive value propositions and leading to more uniform recovered material flows and minimum leakage.
• USER AND STAKEHOLDERS PLATFORM: User behaviour and feedback will be a main driver not only for the design stages and response to user needs but also for the definition of the re-use and recycling strategies. The User and Stakeholder Platform (webpage or/and mobile application) will establish a link between the end user and the relevant stakeholders along all the product stages and its usage cycle while favouring the upgrade, refurbishment, re-use and recycling of products, parts and materials.
• MANAGEMENT OF WASTE STREAMS: At the EoL of circular designed products, new more homogeneous waste streams will allow for more uniform recovered materials to be fed back into the production line. Moreover, acknowledging the required transition from a linear to a more circular economy model, waste sorting and characterization technologies as well as material conditioning technologies will enable current heterogeneous waste streams coming from products designed under linear economy approaches to be integrated into the new circular economy model and thus to be revalorized. 

[3] Vanner, R., Bicket, M., Withana, S., Brink, P. Ten, Razzini, P., Dijl, E. Van, … Hudson, C. (2014). Scoping study to identify potential circular economy actions , priority sectors, material flows and value chains. European Commission.