Plastics Unchained: the Urban Circular Hub as a Factory for the Future
Leuven, Belgium
To drastically reduce dependence on new raw materials and CO2 production, a vital urban circular hub will be developed, aiming to revalorize plastics through recycling and reuse. This hub acts as a crucial link in the value chain by selectively collecting, sorting, and preparing different types of plastics for reuse or processing elsewhere.
Focus sectors
What do we want to achieve?
- Objective #1: Set up specialized operation processes to handle plastics substreams resulting in output ready for high valorisation according to these specific subtypes.
- Objective #2: Work on the intersection between materials science, mechanical engineering, digitalisation logistics and labour skills development to transform small scale manually-operated pilots into a scalable industrial blueprint for tomorrow’s Circular Factory of the Future.
What is our circularity impact?
- Reduced material consumption
- Increased share of renewable and secondary raw materials in overall material demand (virgin plastics avoided)
- Increased self-sufficiency / self-reliance (decreased dependence on raw materials, increased self-suffiency through recycling)
- Increased quantity of materials available for the next cycle
- Reduced waste generation (plastics)
- Reduced incineration and landfilling activities and amounts subjected (plastics incineration avoided)
Partners
See other projects
See all projects
