Research project ReCircE
Project name Digital Lifecycle Record for the Circular Economy – Transparente Gestaltung von Stoffkreisläufen und Optimierung von Abfallsortierung mithilfe von Künstlicher Intelligenz
Acronym ReCircE
Project partner
Duration 01.10.2020 – 30.09.2023
Grantor Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und nukleare Sicherheit (BMU)
Project content Half of the plastic waste generated in Germany is currently being energetically recovered that means incinerated. This leads to the destruction of valuable plastic materials and removes them from the recycling economy. The main reason for the low recycling rate results from a lack of information in the area of recyclable product design and the material flows generated for recycling.
Therefore, the new research project ReCircE aims to develop a digital life cycle record" to increase the transparency of product life cycles and thus improve the circular economy. The cloud-based life-cycle record shares information with producers and disposal companies in order to use the collected data to support more recycling-friendly product development. In addition, an AI system combines the data of the life cycle file with the sensor data of a highly efficient sorting system, thus improving the precision and efficiency of the sorting process. In addition, a resource efficiency tool is being developed that compares different variants of product design, value chains and recycling processes and optimizes them from both ecological and economic points of view.