Worldwide consumption of footwear per year per person has increased from 1 pair of shoes in 1950 to over 3 currently. In 2022, approximately 23.9 billion pairs of shoes were produced globally. In the EU alone, it is estimated that the amount of postconsumer shoes waste is over 1 million tonnes per year. End-of-Life (EoL) management is gaining more attention in the footwear industry, due to increased raw material costs, environmental legislations and ambitious textile waste management targets, e.g., 50% of textiles must be recycled and 20% must be reused from 2025 onwards. However, the recycling rate of footwear is still lower than 5%. This is due to the wide variety of components, e.g., footwear can consist of up to 40 different components, which makes a circular approach to EoL challenging. It is clear that footwear needs a radical shift to achieve circularity. This shift involves simpler shoe design with similar functionality, consumers willing to buy sustainable shoes and increase the longevity, installation of collection and sorting infrastructure, and cost-efficient recycling processes producing high quality secondary resources from old shoes. The SCARPA Doctoral Network on footwear circularity has a clear mission: to train a new generation of experts who possess the skills and fundamental knowledge required to understand how footwear should be designed to allow recycling, how consumers play a role in the value chain, how different recycling technologies can create high value recyclates, and how a decision in one part of the value chain influences the whole value chain’s sustainability, including LCA.

Plastics are the material of choice in packaging applications because of their low cost, high performance and ready processability. Such is their success that it is expected that by 2050 the production of plastic packaging will exceed 250 million metric tons. Considering most plastics that are employed in the packaging industry are used for less than a week, the lack of environmental degradability has led to a tremendous growth of disposed plastics. This growth, together with the fact that the vast majority of synthetic plastics are designed for performance and durability and not for degradability and recyclability, has brought tons of plastic accumulation in the oceans and landfills - ~56 million tons per year. The problem has been highlighted by the acclaimed prediction that by 2050, the ocean is expected to contain more plastics than fish (by weight). Although it was envisioned that biodegradable polymers based on ester linkages such as poly(lactide) (PLA) or poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) could be part of the solution because they are mainly derived from biorenewable sources (e.g. starch and cellulose) and can be enzymatically or hydrolytically degraded leading to an environmentally closed circular ecosystem, the low permeability in the case of PLLA and the poor mechanical properties in the case of PHB has limited their potential. NATURE-EID proposes an innovative research training program at the forefront of circular economy of biobased polyesters. In particular, the project will develop fundamental knowledge in the synthesis of new biobased polymeric materials where the polymers are not only design based on their performance but also on their recyclability.

As of 2025, new generations of Li batteries based on silicon/carbon (Gen. 4a) and Li metal (Gen. 4b) anode, where flammable liquid electrolyte is replaced by a non-flammable solid-one, will take over the current Li-ion device. However, only all-solid-state Gen. 4b Li batteries are expected to fulfil the needed cell gravimetric energy density specifications demanded by electromobility and stationary applications. Therefore, SEATBELT ambition is to generate a local EU industry that revolves around a cost-effective, robust all-solid-state Li battery comprising sustainable materials by 2026. SEATBELT intends to achieve the first technological milestone of developing a battery cell (TRL5) meeting the needs of Electric Vehicle (EV) and stationary industry. The low-cost SEATBELT cell is safe-by-design with sustainable and recyclable materials, reaching high energy densities (>380 Wh/kg) and long cyclability (>500 cycles) by 2026 in line with the 2030 EU targets. The cells are produced by low-cost solvent-free extrusion process comprising a combination of innovative materials: thin Li metal, hybrid electrolyte, a safe cathode active material without critical materials and thin Al current collector. The cell design being optimized by interface (operando and atomistic modelling) and process (machine learning) methodologies. In addition, new in situ imaging instrumentation will be developed to investigate safety properties and mechanical deformation to assess cell safety in real conditions. An innovative recycling cycle from materials to cell level will be also established. Thus, SEATBELT will be the start point of a first EU all-solid-state battery value chain, whose main players in RTD and Industry sectors are within the consortium. So, cells and modules will cycle using industrially relevant protocols dedicated to EV and stationary applications. SEATBELT consortium is composed of 14 beneficiary partners and 3 affiliated entities, and one associated partner, from 7 European countries with an overall budget of 7851448.50€.

Conventional fossil-carbon plastics represent a significant environmental challenge due to their large carbon footprint and poor biodegradability in natural environments. A substantial portion of plastic production is dedicated to food packaging, contributing heavily to global plastic pollution. PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), a biopolymer naturally produced by bacteria, presents a promising alternative as it is fully biodegradable, renewable, and has a low carbon footprint. However, despite its environmental benefits, PHA currently faces significant barriers to widespread adoption: it is expensive, compostable but not recyclable, and hard to process and therefore has to be blended with other less environmentally friendly polymers to form plastics. The SATISPHACTION project will address these issues by developing innovative recycling processes for PHA, with computational assistance. Moreover, the consortium will develop new formulations with increased PHA content, no harmful additives, and thermostable enzymes for accelerated self-degradation. We will demonstrate the viability of these advances through three specific food packaging use cases. We will demonstrate the complete biodegradation of these plastics in natural soils, and fresh and marine water environments, and determine their complete lifecycle impacts.

D-Carbonize´s approach targets biocarbon recycling into valuable starting materials for the chemical/polymer industries and will primarily provide innovative low-carb catalysis solutions. The use of biocarbon is advantageous in many respects as it is renewable, generally abundant and non-toxic, and it represents easy-to-handle carbon reagents even on larger scale. Despite the lack of universal (catalytic) strategies available for biocarbon valorization into monomers and polymers, recent advances in catalysis science have demonstrated the engineering and use of new promising metal- and organo-catalysts with high potential to overcome these limitations, thereby creating the necessary feasibility to transform biocarbon into (1) fine chemicals such as carbonates, carbamates, carboxylic acids, and esters, (2) pharmaceutical synthons, and (3) biomass/CO2-based polymers. Thus, catalysis has already been shown to be a useful technology for biocarbon valorization but has been rarely used in the wider context of new and functional biocarbon based monomer/polymer development. The use of the latter helps to shape the future of functionalized poly-esters/carbonates/amides and their subsequent utilization in novel tailor-made and commercially relevant materials. Furthermore, this project will also explore depolymerization pathways to recycle the synthesized polymers obtaining new monomers and/or other added-value molecules that could re-enter the loop and be used in new polymers and materials. The network will recruit 12 doctoral candidates, who will be awarded double doctoral degrees by two universities in two different countries at the end of the training program. D-Carbonize brings together leading high-education institutions, research centers and companies to form an innovation community able to offer excellent research and training both in R&D and entrepreneurship.