PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
The market for insulation material in Europe was calculated at 235 million cubic metres in 2014. It is expected to grow at over 3% per year until 2022. The most commonly used insulation material is synthetic mineral wool, followed by polystyrene and polyurethane. Mineral wool is a low-cost material that is easy to transport, but little of it is recycled: over 90% goes to landfill.
OBJECTIVES
LIFE_PHIPP demonstrated the environmental benefits and cost effectiveness of a new type of building insulation material made of recycled paper and hemp fibre. This was manufactured at a pilot facility in Latvia. The new insulation mats were designed to be easy-to-install, structurally sound and with thermal insulation properties comparable to those of mineral wool. Other advantages included breathability, recyclability and health safety benefits. The product was manufactured at about one-third of the cost of pure natural fibre material. It was displayed in retail building material stores making it widely accessible to individual homeowners.
This LIFE project was in line with the objectives of the EU Circular Economy Action Plan. It addressed the circular economy concept through actions spanning the value chain or ensuring the use of secondary resources / scrap materials / wastes in other industries or value chains.
RESULTS
The project promoted recycled paper and hemp fibre used in thermal insulation material production. The new type of insulation material will allow to increase recycling of low-grade wastepaper and avoid landfilling or incineration of paper fibre. It will allow to decrease environmental footprint of mineral insulation materials through decreased primary energy use in manufacturing and environmentally persistent waste at the end-of-life of insulation materials.
The main project results:
- The project has created, installed, and tested the pilot production line BF Technology for the thermal insulation material. The prototype can produce the innovative thermal insulation material BFlex, which consists of low–grade wastepaper and hemp fibre. The prototype can manufacture 250m3 of paper-hemp building insulation mats per day and can supply 7% of the estimated Latvian mineral wool insulation market.
- The project has defined a business model, organisational ownership, and partnership structure for market launch. For the pilot production line BF Technology, license documentation was created, which allows this technology to be available to a broad range of manufacturers across Europe.
- The innovative material “BFlex” has a CE certificate for the EU and British markets.
- It is expected that the prototype will manufacture different blended insulation materials in the future and develop and test new combinations and mixes. During the project, 1 413 kg of textile waste was processed. This shows that BF Technology is a long-term sustainable technology that can be used to process different types of waste. It started with paper waste and experimented with textile waste.
- Through built demo houses in Latvia, international exhibitions, publications in international magazines, and internet campaigns, the project has reached 50 organisations in Europe.
- During the project implementation, the CB had excellent dissemination results as the total audience reached is 6 505 102 (out of 500 000 planned).
