ReCircE

Transparent design of material cycles and optimisation of waste sorting with the help of artificial intelligence

The EU Climate Law sets out the goal for Europe to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The transition to a circular economy is central to this and requires the participation of all relevant stakeholders.

At present, there is still insufficient communication between producers, waste disposal companies and recycling companies, particularly regarding the actual recyclability of a product at the end of its life. Producers therefore often lack the information they need to improve the recyclability of products. Meanwhile, the waste management industry lacks knowledge about the quantities and qualities of the expected material flows. This information deficit hinders the logistics and technological development of recycling processes.

 

Project The ReCircE project aims to develop a digital ‘life cycle file’ to increase the transparency of product life cycles and thus improve the circular economy.
schedule 1 October 2020 - 30 September 2023
Research consortium
  • Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS
  • German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
  • GreenDelta GmbH
  • CIRECON - Circular Economy Services
  • TU Darmstadt - Department of Material Flow Management and Resource Management (SuR)
funding The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection with a total of €1.8 million.

 

Approaches

The digital life cycle passport enables various stakeholders to read and write product-related data.

DLCP (Digital Lifecycle Passport) – Smooth information networking along the value chain:

The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is an EU concept and will soon become a legal requirement for companies to provide digital lifecycle data for their products. This transparency in product data is crucial to accelerating the transition to a circular economy and optimising recycling processes. At ReCircE, we therefore place a strong focus on later life cycle phases such as sorting and recycling. That is why we call our implementation of the DPP the Digital Lifecycle Passport. It connects stakeholders along the value chain and enables fast and efficient communication between different actors.

AI-based sorting:

The project uses the digitised, sensor-based sorting plant developed by Fraunhofer IWKS to sort the waste. This plant features freely combinable sensors for colour and shape recognition, near-infrared sensors and metal detectors. The sorting process is iteratively optimised on the basis of sensor data and information from the digital life cycle file. For this purpose, AI decision models for small electrical appliances are being developed that allow specific sorting rules to be generated automatically, also taking into account background information such as incompatibilities between materials. These data-based processes can significantly improve the recycling process.

Representation of the material and information flow in the sorting of waste electrical and electronic equipment

Sustainability – Resource-efficient optimisation of material cycles:

The Digital Lifecycle Passport and AI-based sorting improve the data basis and thus the quality of the sustainability assessment. An integration between DPP, sustainability and sorting processes has been developed and validated.