Procesos de Implementación de residuos en la cadena de valor a través de la I+D+I

Abstract

2.5 billion tonnes of waste were generated within the EU in 2016, a 10.30% of which pertained to the manufacturing industry while a 0.8% to agriculture, forestry and fishing [1]. Reusing this stuff at greater added value products could entail reducing this amount of waste by 277.5 million tonnes. This would contribute significantly to promote moving towards a sustainable model called “circular economy”, which is a goal in the EU for the middle of this century. Turning waste into value in use and value for money products requires a number of steps to enable treating and processing waste to convert it back into raw material suitable for processing, conducting a range of tests and characterizations to identify potential applications and, once these materials and products have been approved, implementing them on the market. To this end, public bodies support this exploration by means of funding programmes falling under several stages called research, development and innovation. The first one means an exploratory assessment of the idea -investing money to obtain knowledge [2], at the second one results of former stage are employed on specific applications and the third one constitutes the steps taken to implementation on the market -investing knowledge to earn money [2]. The process is thoroughly addressed on this paper through several either ongoing or just finished projects, by indicating how each of them may contribute to sustainability of our production system.