📋 Tender Overview
Grant agreement ID: 101166707
DOI
10.3030/101166707
EC signature date
18 December 2024
Start date
1 January 2025
End date
31 December 2028
Description
The healthcare sector faces significant barriers to adopting circular economy principles, primarily due to strict safety regulations limiting the use of recycled materials in products for human use. The EU-funded ENKORE project aims to overcome these challenges by developing an eco-design framework for medical devices and packaging that prioritises safety and environmental compliance. This framework seeks to minimise environmental impact, reduce carbon footprints and optimise resource use by integrating packaging design with considerations for end-of-life. The project will validate its framework through five reference use cases led by health policy centres, pharma, medtech and ICT industries, three major EU hospitals and the EUREGHA network.
Objective
The healthcare sector is hindered by several barriers that hamper the application of circular economy principles (e.g. the safety restrictions of the domain limit the use of recycled materials due to the need of materials biocompatibility, and safety in products to be used in the human body). Led by a multidisciplinary consortium of 39 partners (plus 13 industry affiliates) from 15 EU countries plus UK and USA, ENKORE aim to tackle challenges and develop an ecoDesign framework that supports the development of safe and environmental compliant devices eco-responsible packaging, which minimize the environmental impact, reduce the carbon footprint, and maximize the use and preservation of resources. The main goal is to connect the design of the medical devices packages with the end-of-life stage, thus the technologies that support circularity are taken into account at the medical device conception stage.
ENKORE framework will be validated in 5 Reference Use Cases (RUCs), led by 5 different health regions that bring HPCs and policy maker, 3 large EU hospitals and the reference network for European Regional and Local Health Authorities (EUREGHA). The project developments and RUCs are supported by several associations and NGOs, a packaging manufacturer and a group of SMEs and researchers, specialists in circularity, LCA, social sciences, environment, circularity, and materials.
The validation of the framework shall provide evidence to work with policymakers, creating new or revised standards and create tangible/quantitative evidence. Policy making and regulatory engagement will be strongly performed. The methods and tools comprise Environmental and Social Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA/SLCA), Circularity Calculator (CC) and Digital Product Passport (DPP) approaches, which could be adapted during the second stage of the proposal.
