RENEW Project

Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) contain significant amounts of recoverable secondary raw materials, such as copper, gold, silver, platinum and palladium: their recycling is nowadays strategic because of their scarcity or inhomogeneous distribution on Earth, and because of the economic role they play for countries. The RENEW project aims at validating technologies that allow the separation of these metals from plastic, as well as the study and validation of technologies for the recovery of the separated plastic. In fact, the production of plastic is responsible for 3.8% of global CO2 emissions, and this rate is estimated to rise to 13% by 2050: recycling is then the best option to produce this material, since manufacturing 1 kg of it generates 3.5 kg of CO2, while manufacturing the same amount of recycled plastic only generates 1.7 kg of CO2. Acting at the beginning of the chain, a part of the project is dedicated to the test of innovative eco-points aimed at increasing the collection of WEEE.