CIRCUIT4EU’s focus is to support achieving these goals and the wider strategic aims focusing on CRM and SRM management of WEEE.
On 10-11 June 2026, in Paris, took place CIRCUIT4EU kick-off meeting. A motivated consortium of 21 partners will work towards supporting domestic CRM and SRM retainment as identified in the EU CRM Act and the 2030 benchmark to obtain 25% of annual consumption from recycling sources.
CIRCUIT4EU’s focus is to support achieving these goals and the wider strategic aims focusing on CRM and SRM management of WEEE.
Main objective: to enable selective management of the CRM and SRMs as contained in PCBs, permanent magnets and electronic components, to create a WEEE based circular value flow for reuse, refurbishment and recycling. These innovations will be piloted across four WEEE product groups: laptops, Wi-Fi-boxes, e-scooters and dishwashers.
The project will target 9 out of 34 Critical Raw Materials: Boron (B), Copper (Cu), Cobalt (Co), heavy & light Rare Earth Elements, Platinum Group Metals (PGM), Nickel (Ni), Antimony (Sb) and Tantalum (Ta). The Innovations will be piloted across 4 Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment product groups: laptops, Wifi-boxes, E-scooters and dishwashers, their 2 key components Printed Circuit Boards & Permanent Magnets, and their electronic components. The technology advancement ambition of CIRCUIT4EU is to advance 10 technologies to enable selective recovery, reuse, refurbishment and recycling to unlock their value. Technologies including robotics, desoldering, metallurgy, Digital Product Passports and AI quality and CRM characterisation. The 10 technologies will be advanced up to TRL 7. The socio-technical ambition of CIRCUIT4EU is to realise new market driven circular supply and value chains to enable desired long-term transition outcomes:
1) all WEEE flows across Europe have CRM + SRM visibility in real-time,
2) a shift from a supply-side driven to a liquid demand-side market where refurbishers and recycler can place purchase orders for high CRM/SRM products/ components to collection points.
