Project Ô intends to demonstrate approaches and technologies to drive an integrated and symbiotic use of water within a specific area, putting together the needs of different users and waste water producers, involving regulators, service providers, civil society, industry and agriculture. The project seeks to apply the pillars of integrated water management (IWM) as a model for “water planning” (akin to spatial planning) and to demonstrate low cost, modular technologies that can be easily retrofitted into any water management infrastructure at district/plant level, hence enabling even small communities and SMEs to implement virtuous practices. Technologies and planning instruments complement each other as the first make possible the second and the latter can provide as example or even prescribe the former (and similar technologies allowing virtuous water use practices). Indeed the technologies support the regulators in implementing policy instruments, as foreseen by IWM, for convincing stakeholders (like developers and industry) to implement water efficiency strategies and could include instruments for e.g. rewarding virtuous behaviours (for example: advantageous water tariffs), planning regulations that award planning consent more swiftly or even prescribe the use of water from alternative sources (including recycling). Project Ô has in summary the overall objective of providing stakeholders (everybody using or regulating the use of water in an area) with a toolkit that enables them to plan the use of and utilise the resource water whatever its history and provenance, obtaining significant energy savings in terms of avoided treatment of water and waste water and release of pressure (quantity abstracted and pollution released) over green water sources. This overall objective will be demonstrated in up to four sites each in different Countries of Europe and in Israel, involving industries, aquaculture and agriculture as well as local authorities of different sizes.

TRIBIOME's vision is to develop and implement a systemic solution to transform current food production systems. To this end, TRIBIOME aims to advance alignment with the Green Deal and Farm2fork strategies, by deepening the knowledge of soil/plant/animal and human microbiomes, as well as their interrelationships and interconnections, so that they can play a leading role in the resilience of food production systems in the near future. TRIBIOME will face the main challenges such as the need to minimize resources, reduce the environmental impact and promote healthy and plant-based food chain while feeding a constantly growing world population under the paradigm of climate change. This project aims to drive this concept from its base, establishing its central nucleus in current agricultural production systems based on the relevancy of the soil and plant microbiome, in order to produce more with less, through knowledge of microbial biodiversity and its interaction with the plant, developing novel technologies to influence its modulation (i.e., those enhancing plant growth, nutrient use efficiency, abiotic stress tolerance and better nutritional and health quality of food products) in such a way as to generate an upgrade quality food and have a positive influence on the microbiomes of both animals and humans. To this end, we will work cooperatively in a multiactor approach framework with all actors in the food production systems chain, from farmers to consumers, industry, investors and policy makers, in order to develop systemic solutions that guarantee their implementation and solve the real problems and needs of society.

The high-performance requirements requested by the industry and consumers are responsible that currently 17% of total plastic packaging is multilayer material , meaning 3.03 Mt of plastics. Difficulties for recycling it are accentuated, being mostly landfilled or incinerated. MERLIN project has joined a partnership between sorting technology providers, recyclers, research centers, social innovation experts and end-users to design cradle to cradle solutions. This 36-month research project will offer innovative solutions for all the processes required to increase the quality and rate of recycled plastic materials coming from multi-layer packaging waste: (i) SORTING (combining optical sensors, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and robotics), (ii) DELAMINATION (optimizing depolymerisation and using solvent-based processes), (iii) RECYLING (techniques for repolymerization and upcycling of polymers) and (iv) VALIDATION (developing rigid and flexible packaging solutions and demonstrating circularity of the processes). These solutions will be developed and later validated in a real environment to reach technology readiness level (TRL) 6. This will be complemented with additional techniques and tools for circularity design to increase knowledge and effectiveness in the closure of the European multilayer plastic chain. Finally, transversal activities related to regulation and standardization, safety, sustainability, business, training, dissemination and communication will support to maximize the impact and effectiveness of the project. These actions are aligned with the ones proposed by the European Plastic Strategy to achieve that by 2030 all plastic packaging should be designed to be recyclable or reusable and decrease the quantity of waste generated Potential annual carbon footprint saving that could be achieved recycling all the multilayer waste in Europe could reach 7.42 Mt CO2/year, with a potential economic of €10,605 million and more 106,000 new job positions.

pHYBi is a 48-month action that will combine the soil phytoremediation concept with lignocellulosic biomass valorisation in an integrated phytomanagement circular economy approach. The pHYBi concept will focus its efforts across different levels of development (1) test, optimisation and validation of 4 phytomanagement case studies, (2) optimisation of biomass fractionation into lignocellulosic components based on organosolv techniques, and (3) characterisation and application of lignocellulosic fractions to create a well-planned market route for the potential end-applications in the textile industry. Furthermore, the project will develop a Virtual Replication Tool where phytomanagement, valorisation process and end-products will be integrated, resulting in guidelines, recommendations and thresholds for the replication of pHYBi’s case studies along other areas. To finalise the proposal concept, social innovation activities will strongly connect the process with the market and society with the aim to deliver high quality products with high level of acceptance. To achieve its goals, pHYBi brings together a multidisciplinary team integrating experts in plant and soil science (UBFC, UBU, UNIOVI, PHY), chemical engineering and biorefineries (CETIM), computational science (IDE), textile materials and products (NTT), agroindustry (PARTICULA, PHY, DIH-LEAF), and market analysis, knowledge exchange and social innovation (SEZ).

The RUSTICA projects provides a technical solution to convert organic residues from the fruit and vegetable sector into novel bio-based fertiliser products of high quality that address the needs of modern (organic) agriculture. The project’s ambition goes beyond the simple recovery of nutrients, and also includes the developments of economically viable and environmentally sustainable alternatives to mineral fertilisers with the same or improved agronomic value. The technical solution consists of 5 conversion processes (carboxylic acid platform, microbial biomass production, electrodialysis, insect breeding and biochar production) which can be combined depending on the available waste streams, and integrated with state-of-the-art technologies such as composting. Synergies between the individual conversion processes will be sought and optimized to maximize economic and environmental benefits, and the processes will be demonstrated at TRL7. The resulting ingredients (microbial biomass, mineral nutrient concentrates, insect biomass, insect frass, insect chitin, biochar) will be combined to obtain tailor made fertiliser products adapted to specific crop needs. Parallel with this technological innovation and integration, a multi-actor approach guarantees the implementation potential of the technologies in the agro-food chain, and will lead to sound business models. Several non-technical aspects (environmental and social LCA, legal framework, expected market developments...) will be evaluated in 4 European regions and 1 region in Colombia. Stakeholder involvement at each step guarantees the development of marketable end-products for the fruit and vegetable sector, with a high replication potential to other agricultural sectors. Cooperation with other EUfunded projects working on nutrient recovery from other waste products will stimulate a joint solution to evolve towards a sustainable and circular fertiliser management to close nutrient cycles within and between regions