Flagship Project on Mechanical Recycling

A total of 25 renowned partners from industry and academia are collaborating to optimize the value chain of the recycling process and, ultimately, to prevent plastic waste from entering the environment. The project brings together many key players from the plastics and waste management sectors with leading research institutions. Together, they cover the entire value chain for the mechanical recycling of plastics, which underscores the uniqueness of this flagship project.

The flagship project pursues four main objectives:

1. Identifying and investigating previously untapped potential for mechanical plastic recycling at all process stages,
2. Defining and testing key process steps on a laboratory/pilot scale,
3. demonstrating the eco-efficient market viability of increased volumes of recycled plastics, and
4. demonstrating the scalability of the laboratory/pilot process steps to the production scale.

Building on the research results and the significant accumulation of knowledge and expertise, the goal is to significantly increase the plastics recycling rate by 2030. The project, which is set to begin shortly with a research budget of 6.2 million euros, will run through March 2026 and is funded by the Ministry for Climate Action with 4 million euros.

Reinhold Lang, Director and Professor at the Institute for Polymeric Materials and Testing at JKU and project leader of circPLAST-mr, explains:

“With the circPLAST-mr flagship project, funded by the Ministry of Climate Action (BMK), we have succeeded in designing a research initiative whose scope, project design, and partner structure set an international example. With this, we aim to take the possibilities of mechanical recycling of plastics and the use of recycled plastics to a new level. At the same time, the Upper Austrian Roadmap 2030 creates great synergies that enable us to make even more effective progress together.”

JKU Rector Meinhard Lukas emphasizes:

“The circular economy is one of the most important issues of our time, and I am therefore very pleased that JKU is taking a pioneering role in the field of plastics. However, reducing plastic waste requires a multifaceted approach. That is why the flagship project circPLAST-mr will incorporate not only materials and process engineering but also future technologies such as AI and data science. By bringing together a wide range of expertise and disciplines, we can make mechanical recycling even more effective.”

>> More information about the project

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circPLAST-mr is a flagship project that was approved as part of the first call for proposals under the FTI Circular Economy Initiative. The project is funded by the BMK and administered by the FFG.