CIRCULAR FOAM aims at the demonstration of a territorial cross-sectorial systemic solution for the circularity of high performance plastics from diverse applications on the example of rigid polyurethane foams used as insulation in refrigerators and in construction.
The waste streams will be upcycled chemically, which means that they will be valorised to become new virgin-equivalent feedstock for the chemical industry to produce new high performance plastics. In this way, it will become possible to replace limited fossil-based resources by the renewable waste-based ones, thus not only reducing waste, but also becoming more sustainable and making a step forward to climate neutrality.
The project and the demonstration are targeting a concrete implementation of the solution in question in the selected regions after the project and developing a blueprint for both the geographical transferability to other regions and for the technological extension of the circularity principle to a number of further waste materials from further applications.
Carefully selected regions include the North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), Silesia (Poland) and Greater Amsterdam Region (Netherlands). The consortium is composed of all parties required to close the circular value chain including process industries, manufacturing, waste management, technology providers, as well as research partners, logistics, social scientists and economist working with public sector and citizens.