Polymers are one of the most used materials in different applications, especially in consumer goods like electronics, and the consumption is only expected to rise globally. In Europe, 25,8 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated annually and less than 30 % is collected for recycling and significant shares are exported from EU to be treated elsewhere. Landfilling (31 %) and incineration (39 %) of plastics is high (together 70 %), and by these treatment options the valuable materials are lost from circulation. It is estimated that 95 % of the value of plastic packaging material, between 70-105 billion EUR, is lost annually to the economy after a very short first-use cycle. The industry is lacking standards and main barriers for efficient uptake of recyclates are due to safety concerns, low quality, and recycling rates. PRIMUS activities will increase the resilience of EU's plastic value chains by securing supply of waste plastics as feedstock and increasing its availability through connecting value chain actors, developing methods to control quality, sampling, and analysis, and improving upgrading knowhow and characterize suitability towards added-value products. PRIMUS will prove legislative compliant, privacy-preserving, cost-efficient and feasible technological pathways for tapping into non-recycled or underutilized plastic waste streams. Validated business cases will lower the risks of future investments into European manufacturing capacity. PRIMUS will address one of the core challenges identified in the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, the presence of hazardous substances (brominated flame retardants) and how to effectively and safely debrominate the waste streams for new product use. PRIMUS will contribute to circulating underutilised or non-recycled streams and create further impact by supporting additional production of 0,2 Mtonnes of rHIPS, rPC/ABS, rEPDM and rTPE, which is approximately 6 % of the expected growth of European recyclate market 2018-2024.

Europe generates around 3 billion tonnes of waste yearly, which is expected to grow further. Despite the introduction of innovative waste and recycling technologies, market uptake varies drastically amongst the 27 Member States. New-InnoNet is the new stakeholder platform initiative by 12 European consortium members active as entrepreneurs, researchers and policy makers. These recognise that in order to reach a European near zero waste economy, all value chain stakeholders must cooperate, exchange generated knowledge, insights and hands-on experience and enforce changes to the value chain structure together. Previous initiatives were unable to achieve actual, large scale results towards a sustainable growth of the European economy. The reason is that they either focussed on a specific waste area or they lacked the involvement of the competent industries. This project includes various waste value chains which enable exchange of information and technology transfer from one chain to another. In addition, the consortium’s network includes over 2000 relevant industrial stakeholders and several already expressed their interest in this new stakeholder platform, its goals and actions. During the project, key stakeholders will be mobilised to participate in the platform and road mapping workshops, as only an active involvement of industrial organisations will lead to the desired changes in the structure of the value chain. The many letters of support show the consortium's strength in mobilising stakeholders. NEW_InnoNet’s main objective is to mobilise stakeholders towards building a circular economy by developing and reinforcing solid foundations for building the European Near-Zero Waste Platform through: 1. Set-up and maintain near zero waste stakeholder platform 2. Analyse selected waste streams and develop innovation roadmaps per waste stream 3. Develop an integrated near zero waste strategic research and innovation agenda 4. Stakeholder mobilisation and interaction