We discussed with Nicoletta Picone and Luca Gentilini their involvement in the RECREATE project and the progress they have made so far in Work Package 1 (WP1). The first deliverable, which they presented in Bilbao, and its corresponding tasks revolve around analysing complex End-of-Life (EoL) composite waste streams in Europe today and in the future.

Their deliverable, D1.1: The Mapping and Assessment of the Complex Eol Composite Waste Stream, is composed of five pillars, beginning with an introduction to the composite market. This contains an analysis of market development and trends in Europe, prepared in cooperation with AVK from Germany (to read more about the European composite market click here to read the interview with AVK). Cobat prepared an overview of the existing composite recycling technologies by analysing the main sources of the composite components waste which is produced by European manufacturing sectors. The main aim was to assess as accurately and as reliably as possible the quantities of such composite waste in Europe. Following this task, they prepared an analysis of the legislative framework of European countries in order to identify legislative barriers to composite recycling.

Main sectors identified

In the final step of their research and analysis their team focused on six main sectors: the wind energy, naval, aerospace, automotive, construction and sports (leisure time) sectors. The document will be public from early December and made available in the Partners Area.

Their main challenge was the collection of information about the volumes of waste streams from some of the products, which made it difficult to prepare the analysis for some of the market sectors. They needed to make some assumptions and focus more on components and products with more data available.