A new parallel session to analyse the role of waste as a competitive source of resources

Closing the materials loops is one of the priorities of the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan, not only to lower the environmental impact but also to secure a supply that is stable in price and quantity in order to make the European economy more resilient to fluctuations in the raw materials market.

Valuable materials still continue to end up in landfill. Innovative technical solutions combined with the appropriate policy instruments are still needed to close the loops. However, recycling waste is only viable if there is a real market for products manufactured with a smaller environmental footprint using secondary materials and if, from an integral approach, synergies between different value chains and private-public partnership are strengthened.

This new parallel session will be held on the first of the two days of the event, on 19 September, and will be in addition to the other five thematic sessions that already have been confirmed.

This session will focus on secondary materials and will analyse integral solutions for closing material cycles, will address the challenges of recovering materials in complex scrap and mixes, in general consisting of plastic-metal, and will show the reality of manufacturing products using secondary material envisaged in the new EC Plastics Strategy.