Background The project is targeting the reuse of waste wood and rubber tyre products. (1) The recycling of waste wood products is increasing. This is a positive development as it increases the total volume of CO2 stored as wood-based products, broadening the life-cycle of the fixed carbon in the newly recycled products. However, such wood wastes currently contain physical and chemical contaminants such as metals, stones, glues, paints and melamines. (2) Concerning rubber products, an estimated 1.5 billion tyres are discarded every year worldwide, including 250 million in Europe. The management of used tyres is not yet fully resolved. There are a number of options available, but to date, these have not proven to be sufficiently cost effective to drive the market for recovery. The disposal and incineration of tyres releases potentially harmful compounds into the environment, e.g. polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), benzene and phenol, which have carcinogenic properties. Although some local programmes for recycling have been started around Europe, few are targeted at a national or even a regional level. Objectives The main aim of the ‘WOODRUB’ project is to develop, test and demonstrate innovative, environmentally-friendly products made from recycled wood and rubber from used tyres. Construction materials will be developed from these innovative products and demonstrated to different stakeholder groups. The project will provide managers of wood and rubber waste with a new end-of-life route for their products, and offer public and private construction firms a more environmentally-friendly product option. Moreover, the planned products will operate as carbon sinks –increasing the carbon storage in buildings using the products, and replacing other less eco-friendly building materials. The recovered wood category to be used will be waste from household (furniture, doors, windows, floors, etc.). This material is chemically contaminated by glues, lacquers, paints and coatings. After collection, the waste wood material will be processed into chips without any prior biological, thermal or chemical treatment. This is an innovative approach since the removal of all these chemicals is difficult and costly. Recovered rubber tyres (in the form of particles free from other materials such as wires, ropes and synthetic fibres) will be used with recovered wood chips or sawn timber for the production by thermal processes of innovative composite products. The development of these new products will be first carried out on laboratory scale, to be scaled-up in order to develop and design the wood/rubber composite prototypes. An environmental study and a lifecycle assessment (LCA) will be carried out on the developed products: The products made from recycled wood and/ or rubber will be compared with other conventional building materials and with other end-of-life routes of waste wood and waste rubber. Expected results: The projects plans to focus development work on the following wood/ rubber products: 1. DIY building products such as construction panels, insulating panels and bricks. 2. Construction industry products e.g. panels, safety side barriers for highways and mixed bitumen (asphalt) products. The main expected outputs are: Analyses of quantities and quality of recovered wood and rubber in Europe; Strengthened links among European waste wood and rubber suppliers/users; Processing techniques for recovered wood and waste rubber will be developed; Operations for recovered wood-rubber/tyre-bonding systems will be defined and established; Production processes will be scaled-up and prototype guidelines for manufacturing defined; and LCA results, cost values and eco-efficiency rates will be calculated.