With a significant number of ships expected to reach the end of their service life shortly, ship recycling presents a strategic opportunity for Europe. Boosting domestic ship recycling will:
secure a steady supply of secondary raw materials and so strengthen Europe’s industrial resilience and strategic autonomy;
make a meaningful contribution to the decarbonisation of the EU steel and construction sectors, supporting Europe’s broader climate and circular economy goals;
create green jobs in the recycling and waste management sector;
align with EU environmental policies preventing the export of hazardous materials and restrict exports of waste that harm the environment and human health in third countries.
This report looks at how scrap steel from the EU's increasing numbers of end-of-life ships can help decarbonise the European steel industry, strengthen industrial resilience, create green jobs, preserve and develop maritime skills and build a truly circular economy.
The steel industry expects demand for scrap to rise due to calls for lower carbon footprints and the implementation of new steelmaking technologies. Ship recycling is a significant and largely untapped opportunity to meet this demand.
Policies should support the development of safe and environmentally sound ship recycling, and stimulate material recovery and reuse. This will enable the EU to reduce dependence on imports, conserve valuable resources and advance toward climate neutrality.
On 3 December, the European Commission adopted the RESourceEU Action Plan to accelerate and amplify its efforts to secure the EU's supply of critical raw materials. The plan aims to reduce strategic dependencies and contains a number of measures relevant to the circular economy.
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.
The Nordic Circular Summit is the largest annual conference on the circular economy in the Nordics, a gathering point for changemakers, policymakers, researchers and businesses driving the transition to a regenerative circular economy.
The ECCA has been set up by the European Composites Industry Association (EuCIA) which represents European national composites associations and industry-specific sector groups at EU level.
It was launched in 2025 to establish a circular economy for composites in Europe. It provides a platform for knowledge sharing and cooperation, driving collective action to establish truly circular, sustainable value chains for composite materials. It will set and achieve targets on the use of recovered and recycled composites, develop standards for circular product design and provide a forum for the industry.
Stakeholders across the composites value chain can join the ECCA by signing the declaration. They can then join one of the five working groups, from aerospace to construction to policy/regulation.
The Nordic Circular Summit is the largest annual conference on circular economy in the Nordics, a gathering point for changemakers, policymakers, researchers and businesses driving the transition to a regenerative circular economy.
This year's summit will focus on Circular frontiers: Shaping our future - From remote realities to global blueprints: How Arctic & Nordic communities can shape the next wave of circular innovation.
The MANTRA project, funded by the EU under Horizon Europe, aims to accelerate the green and digital transformation of manufacturing SMEs in Europe by promoting advanced technologies and social innovation.
They have three open calls: for Manufacturing SMEs, Tech-savy SMEs and External Evaluators.
CirkArena is an R&D centre for the circular economy. Focusing on waste, it aims to help transform the local ecosystem and answer people's questions on the plastics value chain.
IFAT Munich is the world’s leading trade fair for environmental technologies. It offers cutting-edge solutions for water, recycling and circularity with a strong focus on innovations with a global impact.
