The European Union faces several challenges caused by globalization. Both the delocalization of production plants (leading to more imported products) and the instability characterizing several industrial sectors force economies to re-think their business models and re-adapt them in a new context, where the sustainability of products and processes is more relevant. Within this overall framework, the need to think about innovative business models and industrial strategies, able to answer to these new requirements is mandatory. One chance is the exploitation of digital technologies. Another is the exploitation of secondary (and critical) resources that, currently, are wasted without any recovery. The project FENIX wants to consider both these issues and their potential at the same time, proposing something that could allow Europe to re-appropriate its pertaining position in the global market. The idea is to study innovative business models and industrial strategies (based on the circular economy paradigm) enabling the development of new product-services through the definition of novel supply chains, resulting from an unconventional mix of current ones. This could allow the easy re-use, reconfiguration and modularization of production systems, the exploitation of overcapacity and the renaissance of industrial poles all over the Europe. Furthermore, the circular economy driven business models and industrial strategies proposed by project FENIX will be demonstrated in existing pilot plants, adequately reconfigured and integrated based circular economy needs.

Several products embed different types of electronic components, and they are even more fundamental in some of the European strategic markets (e.g. automotive). However, reference producers come from extra-EU countries in the far-east side of the world (e.g. China and Taiwan). Trying to cope with all these challenges and the current semiconductors crisis, the European Commission (EC) published (and in some cases is still working on) specific EU strategies/directives for automotive, e-waste (e.g. Digital Product Passport) and, specifically, semiconductors (e.g. European Chips Act). However, trying to make these sectors more sustainable, circular and resilient, it is mandatory to boost both EoL strategies (e.g. sorting, reuse, remanufacturing and recycling) and intra-EU production through innovations and investments. The current international scenario represents a good chance to decouple the European economy from both natural resource depletion (e.g. Critical Raw Materials - CRMs) and dependency from extra-EU supplies of strategic products. In order to better prove what the benefits are of a joined circular/resilient use of secondary resources, the automotive and mass electronics sectors have been identified as the reference contexts for establishing a set of innovative solutions. To this aim, the CIRC-UITS project will focus on demonstrate the improvement to the circularity of automotive and mass electronics sectors by reuse of semiconductors from different sources, as well as support the reuse & remanufacturing of semiconductors into new (high added-value) components and products in these sectors.

C-SERVEES aims to boost a resource-efficient circular economy in the electrical and electronic (E&E) sector through the development, testing, validation and transfer of new circular economic business models (CEBMs) based on systemic eco-innovative services that include: (1) eco-leasing of EEE, (2) product customization, (3) improved WEEE management, and (4) ICT services to support the other eco-services. ICT tools (relying on QR codes) will be developed as the driver of the proposed eco-innovative services to take full advantage of the potential and synergies of two major revolutions of our time: the circular economy and the Industry 4.0. The project will thus contribute to transform the E&E sector into circular and 4.0, raising new opportunities for end-users (such as their involvement in design or the access to a product as a service) and for social and solidarity economy (conducted by NGOs, like EMAUS, which employ people at risk of social exclusion to repair and prepare WEEE for re-use). The techno-economic, environmental and social viability of the new CEBMs will be validated through demonstrations dealing with four target products belonging to different EEE categories: large household appliances, IT equipment, telecommunications equipment, and consumer equipment. These EEE categories together account for 77% of WEEE collected in the EU. The project will result in an estimated economic benefit of 57.03 M€ over the period 2022-2026, which taking into account the project budget (8.03 M€) yields a ROI ~ 7.1. Specifically, the project will generate in the mid-term an economic benefit of 28.4 M€/year, with about 355 green employees (including direct and indirect jobs) and a total reduction of 2,620 tonnes CO2 eq/year. C-SERVEES (10 Member States and Turkey, including industry, end-users and researchers, ensures that strategic, design and implementation decisions) will be in line with business realities and set the foundation for realistic market-ready solutions.

sustainablySMART will make a change to the life cycle of mobile information and communication devices by developing new product design approaches (including enhanced end-of-life performance, re-use and re-manufacturing aspects; i.e. implementing “Design for a Circular Economy”) for smartphones and tablet computers on the product and printed circuit board level, and by new re-/de-manufacturing processes with improved resource efficiency through (1) enhanced sorting capabilities and speed (optimized sorting efficiency), (2) automated disassembly of mobile IT devices for extraction of reusable components / modules, better material separation and depollution of end-of-life devices (increase value creation out of discarded devices significantly to create an economic advantage over shredding processes), and (3) high-quality performance testing (batteries) and rework (semiconductors and modules) of reusable components/modules (creating a market push for reusable parts through enhanced availability for repair and cascade reuse)