On the 27th of September, the Circular Economy Forum: Challenge of plastic recycling organized by the Institute for the Business Competitiveness of Castilla y León (ICE) in collaboration with the Cidaut Foundation was celebratedin the facilities of the Cidaut Foundation. This Forum was inaugurated by the Councillor for Economy and Finance of the Region of Castilla y León (Spain), Mr. Carlos Javier Fernández Carriedo, and the president of Cidaut Foundation, Mr. José Oliveri Gandarillas, who highlighted the importance of the transition towards a productive model of circular economy in the plastic sector.
With the aim of incorporating the circular economy as a key element to promote the change towards a model of sustainable development and focused on plastic materials in particular, the Forum addressed this aspect from a double point of view: first, trends in R&D related to the recycling of plastics was analyzed, and on the other hand, the latest developments in the regulatory context were addressed. This Circular Economy Forum had the following talks:
– ‘Future trends and challenges to optimize the quality of plastic recycling and its circularity’ presented by researchers from CIB-CSIC and ICTP-CSIC.
– ‘Panel Discussion: R&D as a key in the transition to the circular economy’ moderated by CyLTV and composed of the four partners of the Osiris Network -GAIKER, AIMPLAS, AITEX and CIDAUT- and the University of Valladolid (CELLMAT laboratory).
– ‘The new regulations: Challenges and solutions for the Circular Economy’ presented by CICLOPLAST.
– ‘Panel Discussion: Challenges and Opportunities for the different sectors in the new scenario of the recycling and circularity’ moderated by ECOEMBES and composed by the representatives of the following companies: Viscofan, SABIC, SOSTENPLAS and Grupo Antolin.
– ‘Case of successes’ presented by Mr. Antón Fernández, CEO of PolyNext-Naeco.
– ‘Roadmap for the Circular Economy in Castilla y León’ presented by the Natural Heritage Foundation of Castilla y León.
Finally, the event was closed by the Director of Cidaut Foundation, Mr. Juan Carlos Merino Senovilla, and after that the attendees were able to visit the facilities of Cidaut Foundation.
In our commitment to fight climate change, Cidaut is contributing to European Commission’s ambitious policies framed in Green Deal Initiative. The European Climate Pact is an EU-wide initiative inviting people, communities and organisations to participate in climate action and build greener Europe. This initiative is based on connecting and sharing knowledge, learning about climate change, and developing, implementing and scaling up solutions.
In this frame, Cidaut, together with 46 partners, participates in Probono European project. The vision of Probono is to create a people-focused European construction industry that works with a community of stakeholders to create sustainable positive and zero-carbon emitting green buildings and neighbourhoods. The consortium consists of construction actors, public asset service mangers, municipalities, technology solutions providers and experts to transform six European districts into green buildings and neighbourhoods.
The six districts are located in Madrid, Dublin, Aarhus, Brussels, Porto and Prague, where living labs will be implemented to validate Probono’s innovations. The living labs will provide experimentation and innovation environment and will allow testing different solutions for sustainable buildings, circular economy, material up-grading and electromobility. These solutions will be implemented in the coming five years.
The project will provide strong examples of green buildings and neighbourhoods’ technological and social innovation implementation by focusing on building infrastructure and exploiting digitalisation and smart technologies. Probono will create green buildings and neighbourhoods Strategic Planning Tools and provide evidence-based policy recommendations, standardisation actions, and robust adoption and commercialisation strategies. Project work will engage citizens in co-designing and co-delivering sustainable GBNs.
Acknowledgment
The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union (EU) project PROBONO (GA #101037075)
OSIRIS is an ambitious national project whose main objective is to promote a strategic cooperation in recycling and recovery technologies to improve the circular economy of composites and complex plastic materials with high added value, a work that began last January.
This three-year project in which four Technology Centers participate: AIMPLAS (Technological Institute of Plastics), AITEX (Textile Research Institute), CIDAUT (Foundation for Transport and Energy Research and Development) and GAIKER (GAIKER Foundation), is financed by the CDTI (Centre for Industrial Technological Development), through the Ministry of Science and Innovation, in the context of the grant of aid for Technological Centers of Excellence “Cervera” (CER-20211009).
The consortium is working together, sharing experiences, solutions and good practices that contribute to improving recycling technologies for composite and complex plastic materials. Technologies in which the members of the consortium have been working in recent years and their corresponding results have allowed them to be recognized as “CERVERA Centers of Excellence”. The OSIRIS NETWORK, formed by these excellent Technological Centers, has the objective of positioning itself as a reference network both nationally and internationally, leading to the growth of the R+D+i projects and technology transfer to the business and industrial fabric.
To achieve this objective, the network is centred on three strategic technological approaches: technology for waste recycling, recovery of intermediate products and post-processing of intermediate products into final products. On the advances of these scientific bases, led by more than 84 researchers and technicians from the whole network, the strategy of national and international dissemination, the training and the attracting talents, the attracting companies and the planning of new R+D+i projects is supported. All of the above aims to contribute with a global and strengthened vision to the challenges of the present and the future with respect to the recycling of complex raw materials.
All the advances of the OSIRIS NETWORK can be soon followed in the website: www.redosiris.com
Urban mobility is smoothly changing, the electric vehicles are slowly but firmly conquering their natural environment. The cities are the places were the highest percentage of the population is concentrated, for this reason it is very important to improve the quality of the air, highly related to the health. At the same time the cities are the places where the travelling distances are shorter, lower to 30km as an average daily. And finally, the cities are the places with a higher number of transport means coexist.
The scenario that has been described involves a high interaction between different transport modes from walking to public transport going through monocycles, scooter, bicycles, motorbikes and four wheelers. The aim of Multi-Moby project, funded by the European Commission in the H2020 Programme, is focused on the four wheelers, taking as a base a high performance low consumption urban electric vehicle, Cidaut is leading the activities to ensure the safety of all the actors involved in the urban mobility. To get this ambitious target the safety is tackled from an integral point of view, including active and passive aspects.
From the active point of view the vehicle is equipped with advanced driving assistance systems that allow the identification of the more vulnerable users of the road and to take autonomous decisions in order to about accidents.
From the passive point of view, an optimized structure and ad-hoc developed restrain system protect the occupants in the event of a lateral, frontal or rear crash. But also, in the case that the active safety systems cannot avoid the accident against a vulnerable road user, the structure of the vehicle has been designed to minimize the damage.
In the frame of Multi-Moby European Project, which aims at developing of technology for safe, efficient and affordable urban electric vehicle, Cidaut is responsible of the integral safety of the vehicle’s occupant but also of the rest of the vulnerable road users.
Multi-Moby is the last, by now, of a large row of projects that were born from the idea of developing environmental friendly, sustainable vehicles considering circular economy concepts, and will finish with the development of a digitalized micro-factory for the assembly of the final solution. In this project the vehicle safety is being improved that’s to the introduction of automated driving solutions that will contribute to increase the integral safety of occupants and the rest of road users.
Cidaut is in charge of the structural design, the development of the restraint system and the implementation of innovative solutions for vulnerable road users’ protection, all of them supported by the automated driving capabilities of the vehicle. The vehicle will be equipped with artificial intelligence to look out the environment and make decisions to avoid or mitigate the possible accident. In the worst case, if the accident happens, Cidaut’s solutions will minimize its consequences on both, the occupant and the vulnerable road users.
Acknowledgment
The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union (EU) project MULTI-MOBY (GA #101006953).
