Background Some 250 million tonnes/yr of municipal solid waste is produced in Europe. Some 20% of this waste is burned in incinerator, creating large volumes of slag and fly ash. Slag is classified as special waste and fly ash is classified as hazardous waste. While some recycling options exist for slag, these are generally low value and no satisfactory technologies are in place to reuse the often toxic fly ash. Similar problems exist for treating battery waste because of the difficulties in recycling battery acids. Slag and fly ash could however be used as raw materials in the manufacture of certain building materials, while battery acid could be reused to help further reduce waste volumes from EU incinerators. Objectives The VALIRE project’s principle objective is to reduce the environmental impacts from modern waste incinerators by demonstrating alternative uses for glassy combustion residues (slag and fly ash) as raw materials for high value building materials, namely glass wool and glass foams. This will also reduce consumption rates of the current raw materials used in glass product manufacturing, and so help improve the environmental footprint of Italy’s glass sector. Additional efforts will be applied to reuse sulphuric acid from battery waste stores as a novel agent for neutralising calcium oxide content in slag. The overall project results are expected to reduce environmental impacts from modern waste incinerators to virtually zero. These technological developments will be enhanced by project work aimed at raising awareness among incinerator stakeholders on the new low impact opportunities. Project results will also be disseminated to producers of construction materials, especially insulators, to highlight the potential availability of lower cost and more ecological production methods. Expected results: A treatment process for recycling of slag into high value products for the construction and insulation industry (equivalent to the consumption of more than 20 000 tonnes of slag during the project duration); A treatment process for recycling hazardous fly ash into high value products (glass frit) for the construction and insulation industries (equivalent to the consumption of 1 250 tonnes of fly ash during the project duration); 5 000 tonnes of sulphuric acid substances will be recycled by the pilot and industrial plants for slag treatment; Increased awareness among producers of construction materials of opportunities for reducing their primary raw material use.