The Life M3P project – co-funded by the European Commission under the Life 2014-2020 Programme – will study and implement an on-line platform to promote exchanging of industrial waste among the companies of manufacturing districts. The Life M3P project will last three years (October 2016 – September 2019) and it runs in Italy – Lombardy, Belgium – Flanders, Greece – Western Macedonia, Spain – Asturias.
The final objective is to demonstrate and apply experimentally a model of territorial management of industrial waste in order to promote the Industrial Symbiosis. Through the proposed model, the project wants to boost the overall efficiency of industrial processes in the target areas by increasing the use of industrial waste and reducing landfill, storage and transport.
Implementing and using the on-line platform, will allow to address the lack of information about the industrial waste produced in a local area, through a systematic approach oriented to the life cycle of products and to the material chain needed to make them.
In particular, the partnership – coming from Italy, Belgium Spain and Greece – aims to strengthen local networks for the improvement of the industrial waste, fostering their use in other local businesses and reducing the needs for treatment, storage, transport and the consequent environmental impact.
The M3P project wants to support industrial companies in their continuous improvement in order to reduce processing waste and to replace raw materials with others resources less critical for environment and supply.
In fact, the study of a model of local collaboration on materials will allow companies to act consciously as “geographical area” and it will provide to small and medium sized companies useful operational tools for the materials efficiency.
The Life M3P project will also allow to search for new applications of waste, based on creative features and useful to to product managers, process engineers, designers, looking for innovative solutions or replacements for their products.
The expected result is twofold:
- create awareness of locally available resources (waste or by-products), in order to reduce the need for handling, as well as the treatment and final disposal;
- strengthen the synergies with the other European industrial areas in order to get a better overall waste recovery.
