EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

The Data Centre Industry (DCI) is concentrated in North-West Europe, especially UK, Germany, France & Netherlands. DC equipment is replaced every 1–5 years, substantially contributing to the production of WEEE (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment), one of the fastest growing waste streams. WEEE contains Critical Raw Materials of high technical and economic importance and vulnerable to supply disruption, usually exported or sent to landfill at end of life. At present only 10% of Critical Raw Materials are recycled and recovered per year.
In this context, project partners from UK (London South Bank University), France (TEAM2, Terra Nova Development and WeLOOP), Germany (Wuppertal Institute for climate, environment and energy) and Netherlands (Green IT Amsterdam) are working together on a sustainable Circular Economy for the Data Centre Industry (CEDaCI). CEDaCI will facilitate the implementation of a Circular Economy (CE) for Critical Raw Materials in NWE and reduce the environmental impact arising from the growth in redundant equipment, by simultaneously increasing materials recovery, reducing use of virgin materials and developing a secure and economically viable CRM supply chain. The project is co-funded by Interreg North-West Europe Programme.
This contribution aims at presenting the CEDaCI project and sharing results of the circular economy situational analysis for Data Centre Industry. The results of this phase include: State of art and assessment of current practices & emerging trends (with focus in all partner countries), identify challenges and barriers and potential solutions for implementation, establishment of criteria (age of the equipment, technology, components, etc.) for sustainable refurbishing and recycling of DC equipment.