Launch of the PEPR "Recycling, recyclability and reuse of materials" program

Launch of PEPR: Recycling, recyclability and reuse of materials

Spearheaded by the CNRS and financed to the tune of €40m over six years by France 2030, the PEPR (Programme et Equipements Prioritaires de Recherche) "Recycling, recyclability and reuse of materials" is designed to meet the ecological, economic and technological challenges involved in the transition to a competitive, environmentally-friendly circular economy.

The launch event provided an opportunity to present the five targeted research projects focusing on each family of materials (plastics, composites, textiles, strategic metals and paper/cardboard), as well as five cross-functional research projects focusing on batteries, new energy technologies, electrical and electronic waste, household waste (excluding compost) and the reuse and recycling society.

Economic, regulatory, standardization, territorial and political issues are also addressed by this PEPR. It therefore concerns all economic sectors and is accompanied by the mobilization of unprecedented resources in terms of scientific disciplines, covering the sciences of matter, physics, engineering, earth and life sciences, and socio-economic and political sciences.

Continuing along the innovation value chain, the CIRCLE consortium, winner of the "Pre-maturation and maturation" call for projects under the same national acceleration strategy and coordinated by CNRS Innovation and SATT PULSALYS (Société d'Accélération de Transfert de Technologies), was also presented. The project aims to develop and transfer to industry the knowledge and technologies previously developed under the PEPR program.

The event takes the form of several scientific days dedicated to the inauguration of each axis, such as the "Plastics" axis presented on June 19, 2023 in Villeurbanne (INSA Lyon), and the "Composites" axis in Nantes on September 6, 2023. These days are aimed at scientific partners already involved, but also at all those who may be mobilized within the framework of future calls for projects and/or the activities of the totem sites to be built, players in the world of innovation, industrialists and socio-economic players.

The aim of the 'PLASTICS' "Recycling, recyclability and reuse of plastics" project is to develop new recycling technologies that will create value in France and reduce the country's dependence on foreign markets. It will focus on the behavior of contaminants in plastics, study the dismantling and disassembly chain for complex structures such as multi-layers, and investigate the potential for chemical recycling of plastics. These three areas are linked to identified scientific challenges, and are complemented by cross-functional initiatives on product design (recyclability), characterization methods, material flow modeling and analysis, recycling schemes and life-cycle analysis.

The 'COMPOSITES' project "New generation of recyclable CMOs from recycled raw materials: towards a circular economy" will study the separation of fiber/matrix constituents from composites used in wind power, electronics and automotive applications, and present in today's and tomorrow's composite material deposits. It will also study the development of new composites based on recycled materials, taking into account their end-of-life (integration of their recyclability right from the design stage).