PlastiCity
Resourcing Plastics from the City
Priority Axis
Resource Efficient EconomySpecific objective
Circular Economy
Lead partner
Stad GentContact
Date de début
01/01/2019Date de fin
30/09/2022Project budget
9 450 154 €ERDF amount
5 501 451 €ERDF rate
58%À propos
Common challenge
The 2S region is one of the most proliferative regions in the EU when it comes to generating plastic waste, but overall, plastic recycling rates are incredibly low (20-30%). Within the urban environment – often including cities near water bodies – a lot of plastic waste is available that would, in terms of quality, technically be eligible for recycling but is not effectively validated. These so-called ‘lost plastics’ can form a prominent role in the circular economy, providing actors and stakeholders with an economic opportunity to benefit by stepping away from traditional plastic disposal methods. These economic opportunities are not fully known/understood, collection logistics not fully developed, sorting facilities not well equipped or stakeholders not fully engaged. These are all barriers to realize the full potential of plastic in the circular economy and need to be overcome if the 2S region is to play a key role in delivering the EU strategy for plastics in the Circular Economy.
Overall objective
Main outputs
Cross border approach
Main Achievements
Since the start of the project in January 2019, PlastiCity has completed 4 project outputs. The project published a report outlining the replicable strategy to develop case-specific solutions for the collection, sorting and reprocessing of currently wasted plastics in urban environments. The planned and executed plastic waste collection from local businesses, with the help of the project's investments in each region.
The Hague invested in an innovative solution: an extra large cargobike, including a large container. Besides being a zero-emission last mile solution it also is a good promotion vehicle. With this bicycle, a first round of plastic collection was organised in the Hague. In Flanders, an electric vehicle was acquired by GRCT as part of the mobile unit to collect plastic waste from local businesses, including a bar code scanning system to track the origin of the plastic waste at company level. A first collection round was executed in the Herenthals region. DPL invested in an installation that addresses the issue of contaminated film. The investment can be used for testing and exploring new markets for the hubs in the different regions.
In all regions, meanwhile, a strategy to enthuse local businesses to participate in PlastiCity was also being worked on. Interviews were conducted with local businesses to identify their attitudes towards plastic waste separation. Ghent University acquired two sea containers and developed a mobile unit for plastic characterization and pretreatment with those two containers. The necessary machines were purchased and installed in the containers and the containers are operational. The mobile unit is temporarily parked on university property until travel restrictions related to corona are lifted.