The expected impact consists in increasing the integration and sharing the knowledge management in small-medium foundries. The new challenge is to give input to SMEs to take advantage of environmental risks and crisis as on opportunity to become an important engine for economic and sustainable growth, through the development and implementation of non-polluted processes and environmental-friendly technologies.

ECO-in-Foundries will improve the integration and the co-ordination between enterprises and research and technology development performers in Europe, in order to fill the gap and fragmentation in this field.

The networked meeting among foundries, their association and technicians can facilitate the environmental technologies development, give input on policy development and new regulation, starting from bottom-up initiatives of information-sharing.

The ECO IN FOUNDRIES network will allow:

•  to identify environmental priorities;
•  to identify promising technologies and barriers that limit the use of clean technologies
•  to raise awareness of environmental problems and of the competitiveness benefits of environmental improvements;
•  to spread the importance of understanding the environmental impacts from foundry related activity, not only involving small-medium foundries its workers and managers, but also inviting contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers to active participation through meetings and communication flows.
•  to increase the popularity of the European Research (priorities, results, etc.);
•  to enlarge the SMEs participation to the European research activities (acting as research performers, end users, dissemination activity performers; or test case).
•  to create a European network and to connect public or private Research Institutes, RTD performers, small-medium foundries, their Associations and their suppliers;
•  to raise awareness of environmental problems;
•  to create durable conditions for providing European policy makers with points of view, needs, expressions and ideas.

ECO-in-Foundries contributes to the European research growth in three ways:

•  by increasing the knowledge and the sharing on existing know-how in small-medium European foundries;
•  by increasing the participation of small-medium foundries to the European research programmes;
•  by providing inputs to the research policy makers (E.C. especially).

The added value of Eco-in-foundries is reflected in the sharing of know-how, the exchange of best practices and by jointly tackling environmental issues on European level. The added value is also assured by the high level of competence and the knowledge quality of the partners involved.