Circular economy

Secondary raw materials and regulated substances

In order to recover waste, it is necessary to know the content of substances that are restricted or even prohibited by the REACH regulation. INERIS is working on the hazardousness of these substances in the following sectors:
-    plastics, through knowledge of hazardous additives such as flame retardants, phthalate-type plasticisers and PFAS (see Circular Flooring and Blackcycle projects)
-    renewable energies, such as electric mobility batteries and photovoltaic panels. INERIS characterises the black mass from electric vehicle battery recycling and assesses its risks. The STEEVE and fire platforms are used to test prototype batteries made from recycled materials. In the photovoltaic sector, INERIS is working on the end-of-life dismantling of panels to pave the way for their recovery
for biomass recovery, a sector that uses contaminated waste (pollutant-accumulating biomass, ballast wood, etc.).

Safety of recycling and recovery processes

The development of safe and sustainable recycling processes requires risks to be taken into account from the design stage onwards. INERIS supports the implementation of safe recycling and recovery processes by integrating all risks from waste collection to the integration of secondary raw materials into a manufacturing process. To provide this support, INERIS has testing facilities, laboratories and modelling tools that are available to public authorities and industrial companies to help improve the safety of industrial facilities (SEVESO directives/ICPE regulations). INERIS also supports the development of industrial and territorial ecology (ITE) or industrial symbiosis systems, taking into account domino effects based on risk analyses, knowledge of waste, risks associated with its transport and storage, and incorporating multi-criteria and organisational and human factor (OHF) analyses.