Greening metals and minerals production, including CRMs, comes with higher capital and operating costs – a 'green premium'. This reflects investment in decarbonising production processes, ensuring robust environmental and social safeguards and advancing circularity.
Manufacturers appear hesitant to absorb such premia and a credible green-premium market for CRMs is unlikely to emerge without regulatory intervention.
This analysis has laid out a phased, two-tier pathway towards a premium market. The first tier would focus on setting minimum market-access requirements, in order to level the playing field and exclude the worst performers from EU market access. A second tier of instruments is therefore needed to reward those who exceed baseline standards through targeted, conditional incentives.
Academics for Circular Economy welcomes the creation of a Circular Economy Act that aims to address issues such as resource dependence, competitiveness, and environmental pressures. To leverage the full economic, social and environmental potential of the circular economy, the Circular Economy Act must address a number of critical points:
Competitiveness through upstream innovation
European resource independence by design
Resilience of the single market
Environmental protection via a regenerative bioeconomy
The Horizon Europe RECREATE (REcycling technologies for Circular REuse and remanufacturing of fiber-reinforced composite mATErials) project aims to develop a set of innovative technologies which will exploit the potential of end-of-life complex composite waste.
It is organising a webinar looking at practical and emerging approaches for recovering value from end-of-life composite parts.
The RE-PLAN CITY LIFE project aims to raise awareness about the circular economy potential of materials, products and applications obtained from tyre recycling and encourage the uptake of environmentally-friendly behaviour and practice in urban communities.
Its platform includes a community and marketplace for exchanging practical information about recycled tyre materials and a calculator for assessing the circularity and environmental impact of products.
The Commission is holding a public consultation on how to improve EU product legislation, specifically regarding the circular economy and the digital transition. It relates to the revision of the New Legislative Framework: established in 2008, it provides a blueprint for product harmonisation legislation, aligning 30 EU legal acts.
The new SOLRESS project will be working on developing safer, sustainable and high-performance bio-based solvents for European industries, using organic waste as a feedstock.
The EU Food Loss and Waste Prevention Hub is a one-stop-shop for stakeholders active in the area of food loss and waste prevention and reduction, across the EU and beyond. It's a source of information on what's going on in this community!
On 27 November, the European Commission adopted a bold new Strategic Framework for a Competitive and Sustainable EU Bioeconomy Strategy. By using renewable biological resources from land and sea and providing alternatives to critical raw materials, the EU aims to move forward towards a more circular and decarbonised economy and decrease dependence on fossil imports.
FUELPHORIA is an EU-funded Innovation Action project that aims to establish sustainable, competitive and secure value chains from advanced biofuels and renewable fuels of non-biological origin. It will be holding a webinar to provide an overview of ongoing activities across the project's four demonstration sites in Belgium, Spain and Greece.
