Background Many municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) companies in Europe use a dry process to convert bottom ash into low-grade granulate. In the Netherlands and Germany, this granulate is recycled as road fill. Elsewhere in Europe, it is usually simply disposed of in landfills. Objectives The overall objective of the R2P project was to identify new opportunities for reducing environmental impacts from mining primary raw materials, using bottom ash as road fill or depositing it in landfills. These aims were to be achieved by demonstrating new approaches for converting ash wastes from municipal incinerators into sand and granulate suitable for high-grade recycling within cement, calcium-silicate brick and metallurgical industries. A demonstration plant that applies a wet process was meant to be built for this purpose which also aimed to retrieve high-grade metals such as aluminium, copper, lead and zinc from the ash waste. The wet process has a twofold advantage. Firstly, it converts the ash into sand and granulate that are suitable for high-grade recycling. Secondly, high-grade metals such as aluminium, copper, lead and zinc can be fully retrieved. Results Due to technical difficulties (leading to serious delays) that occurred in the operation of the pilot plant, no full-scale bottom ash treatment plant was constructed during the duration of the R2P LIFE funded project. Experiences gained during the pilot plant phase have however provided valuable knowledge about the necessary improvements that need to be made to the proposed technology before it can operate effectively at the desired industrial scale. The beneficiary intends to build on this knowledge gained through the LIFE project findings, and continue its plans for a full scale installation of the demonstration plant – that is expected to be established via a public private partnership.