Project description
Food waste conversion for consumer goods
Agricultural and industrial food waste can be converted into raw materials used to make consumer products. The EU-funded WASTE2FUNC project will convert food and crop waste into bio-based functional molecules, lactic acid and microbial biosurfactants for the household and healthcare products industries. It will establish a sustainable biomass waste supply chain in close collaboration with the primary sector by developing an appropriate registration and collection system for erratic agricultural biomass waste and integrating this new biomass supply chain into the existing industrial one, which is currently converting this biomass into biogas. WASTE2FUNC will involve all relevant stakeholders, reduce CO2 emissions, increase value from waste and create high-tech jobs.
Objective
The WASTE2FUNC project aims to resolve supply chain hurdles towards the efficient conversion of food (crop) waste into two types of biobased functional molecules for use in home- and personal care applications: lactic acid and microbial biosurfactants, functionally outperforming or equalling their respective fossil-based and/or 1G bio-based benchmarks. A new and sustainable biomass waste supply chain will be set up, in close interaction with the primary sector, by developing an ‘ad hoc’ registration- and collection system for erratic agricultural biomass waste and integrating this new biomass supply chain with an existing industrially available and continuous food waste stream , currently converted into biogas. This integration is crucial to build viable business cases associated with the WASTE2FUNC supply- and -value chains. The integration of the WASTE2FUNC biomass supply chain with new value chains based on the cost- and eco- efficient conversion of the waste biomass into market ready functional molecules for home- and personal care applications will be demonstrated. The value chains will be set up by (interaction with) all relevant key stakeholders: farmers and their representatives, primary crop-/food processors, food processors and -retailers, food waste collectors, technology owners for bio-based process, scale up facilities, product developers and -retailers in the respective sectors of application (home- and personal care) (B2B and B2C), regulators and last but not least the consumer . This interaction will be key to define benefits required for the farmers, regulatory- and processing hurdles, product developer- and consumer requirements and -constraints. Together with environmental, economic, social and regulatory analyses and constant optimization, performed by the WASTE2FUNC project partners, this will decrease CO2 emissions with at least 20% and increase value from waste with 2-10 fold and create (high tech) jobs for the primary- and downstream sector in Belgium and Europe.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- H2020-EU.3.2. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy Main Programme
- H2020-EU.2.1.4. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Biotechnology
- H2020-EU.3.2.6. - Bio-based Industries Joint Technology Initiative (BBI-JTI)
Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
9042 Desteldonk Gent
Belgium
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.