Past circular economy research projects
Past circular economy research projects
Developing sustainable food chains across Europe
This €1.5m Interreg Europe-funded project, ‘Foodchains 4 EU’, set out to improve the implementation of regional policies that stimulate the delivery of innovation to create sustainable food chains.
It brought together partners from the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, and the UK and ran from 2017 to 2021.
Creating raw materials from textile waste
Creating raw materials from textile waste
Resyntex was an €11.5m European Union Horizon2020 funded project that ran from 2015 to 2019.
The project focused on addressing the entire textile waste stream, transforming post-consumer textile waste into secondary raw materials through the development of innovative chemical recycling processes, creating a circular economy and reducing negative environmental externalities.
The project represented an important development within the industry and the university is now exploring opportunities for continuing this important research, upscaling solutions for mass adoption.
Lev Wave
Integrating the circular economy into the paper industry
Manchester Metropolitan University was part of the Innovate UK-funded LevWave project, which worked to identify new circular economy and industrial symbiosis opportunities in the UK’s paper industry.
This involved screening the performance of 30 innovative catalysts with the potential to facilitate the co-production of valuable bulk chemicals and solid chars from levulinic acid, a by-product in paper pulp effluents.
Waste EI
Evaluating waste education across Europe
This Erasmus+ funded project, ‘Waste EI’, evaluated waste education across five EU regions: the UK, Estonia, Germany, Romania, and Croatia.
The regions covered by the partnership represented approximately seven million residents and five million tonnes per annum of municipal solid waste (MSW), with a variety of recycling approaches employed.
With the aim of sharing best practice, the project worked to encourage citizens to improve the quality and volume of valuable resources made available for recycling.