URBANREC

URBANREC project aims to develop and implement an eco-innovative and integral bulky waste management system (enhancing prevention, improving logistics and allowing new waste treatments to obtain high added value recycled products) and demonstrate its effectiveness in different regions. In URBANREC project, Northern, Mediterranean, Eastern and South-eastern areas in Europe are represented by Belgium, Spain, Poland and Turkey, which have very different urban waste recycling rates, from around a 60% in Belgium, 25-30% in Spain, or 20% in Poland, to less than 5% in Turkey. URBANREC project aims to improve the separation and disassembling of bulky waste - implementing advanced fragmentation techniques to obtain high quality raw materials, promoting innovative valorisation routes for those considered more problematic (PUR foam, mixed hard plastics and mixed textiles), not recycled due to lack of eco-innovative cost-effective solutions. The waste treatments considered in the project include i) rebonding and chemical glycolisis for the PUR materials, to prepare renewable adhesives, ii) needle felt to obtain isolation panels from textiles, iii) fibre reinforced composites from textiles, iv) wood Plastic composites (WPC) and v) catalytic hydro-gasification with plasma for mixed hard plastics to obtain chemicals or fuel. These treatments will be optimized and implemented at industrial level thanks to the collaboration of the URBANREC partners: top Research Institutes at EU level, and companies interested in obtaining novel eco-friendly products from waste, under a circular economy approach. All relevant actors in the waste management chain in every country have been also involved as project partners (local authorities and city amenity sites in Belgium, Spain, Poland and Turkey) guaranteeing the implementation of the proposed solutions at local level, adapting them to suit the particular characteristics of each area, ensuring the replication at EU level.