Summary

       Plastic is an adaptable material widely used in contemporary life, yet its recycling rate after the initial use remains insufficient. Achieving the EU's circular economy action plan target of a 50% recycling rate for plastic packaging by 2025 is challenging, especially for Western nations and even more so for the South/Eastern Danube region. This area faces significant shortcomings in waste management infrastructure and lacks industrial expertise in recycling secondary plastic materials.

       The Plan-C project, involving a consortium of 14 partners from Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, and Moldova, aims to enhance the transformation of the plastic value chain in the Danube Region towards circularity. This is to be achieved through transnational collaboration among plastic processors/producers and the machinery industry. A cohesive effort across the Danube Region countries is essential to instigate a profound change in this intricate plastic value chain, necessitating a shift in mindsets, behaviors, and business models.

       Consequently, the key players in the value chain - plastic producers and machinery companies - enhance their competitiveness, thereby contributing to the EUSDR PA8 objectives. Through transnational technology transfer and a design thinking approach, the project partners (PPs) and plastic producers collaborate to develop and promptly showcase circular plastic prototypes. The resulting Guideline for Plastics Circularity is designed to accumulate knowledge and capabilities for practical implementation within regional companies. The Associated Strategic Partners (ASPs) and other involved policy stakeholders facilitate the integration of the related strategy to promote circularity in the plastic industry into the RIS3.

Similarly, the PPs and machinery companies analyze, conceptualize, and prototype circular solutions for each phase of the machinery life cycle, creating corresponding digital business models. These are consolidated into a Guideline for circularity in the machine sector. The associated strategy for enhancing circularity in the machinery industry is intended for integration into the RIS3 of the partner countries, backed by robust support from ASPs.

       Both groups - PPs and a minimum of 140 enterprises from the plastics and machine industries in the Danube region - collaborate to envision a transformed plastic value chain designed for circularity. This initiative demonstrates the advantages of plastic reuse/recycling and the maintenance, redistribution, refurbishing/remanufacturing, and recycling of machinery.

       The final Transnational Action Plan aims to embed the circular economy within the comprehensive plastic value chain and is targeted towards SMEs, large enterprises, business support organizations (BSOs), sectoral agencies, and public authorities. At least 70 organizations will enhance their capabilities to implement circular concepts throughout the plastic value chain.