Portuguese toy recycling project wins New European Bauhaus Award 2022

REPLAY receives a prize of 30 thousand euros

Editor June 14, 2022

1 minute read

The REPLAY project is one of the winners of the New European Bauhaus Awards 2022, in the category “Shaping a circular industrial ecosystem and supporting life cycle thinking”.

The project, led by Zero Waste Lab and Precious Plastic Portugal, developed a network for collecting and sorting end-of-life toys for transformation into new toys. The winners of the New European Bauhaus Awards 2022 were announced during the New European Bauhaus Festival on June 9-12 in Brussels.

REPLAY is based on the concept of the circular economy and aims to encourage public and political discussion in Portugal about the lack of solutions for recycling plastic objects, such as toys.

In 2021, it tested a recycling circuit in the municipalities of Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, Porto, Cascais, Lisbon, and Évora. The plastic collected was sent to five Precious Plastic Portugal laboratories for creative transformation into a new toy, voted on by more than 260 children. The project now intends to expand and include other municipalities.

In 2021, the AYR sustainability platform, developed by CEiiA, was also distinguished in these awards, in the category of “Products and Lifestyles”.

“Portugal reinforces its presence in the list of countries distinguished by good practices that illustrate the values of sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion of the New European Bauhaus. We are awarded in two consecutive years and in different categories”, explains Joana Mendonça, president of the National Innovation Agency, which follows (within the PERIN network) the New European Bauhaus. “We hope that this award will boost national participation in New European Bauhaus initiatives, which ANI will monitor and support.”

The New European Bauhaus (NEB) awards recognize and celebrate inspiring examples of transformations in physical spaces, in our experiences, and in our daily lives, that embody the three core values of NEB: the beautiful, the sustainable, and the inclusive.