Project description
A sustainable circular economy uses food processing waste to make food packaging products
Plastic packaging materials have become ubiquitous. They are widely used in the food and beverage, healthcare, cosmetics, consumer goods and home and garden industries. Most plastics start with hydrocarbons from crude oil. The USABLE PACKAGING project plans to turn that process on its head by developing biomass-based, biodegradable raw materials from food processing streams. Scientists will then use those materials to produce packaging that rivals conventional petrochemical-based ones in technical characteristics and performance. To round out the benefits, the packaging can be recycled in two ways, either through conventional organic recycling to yield biogas or through biotech recycling for reuse in USABLE PACKAGING. The end result will be a sustainable, bio-based product within a circular value chain.
Objective
USABLE Packaging will develop high performance plastic packaging through a sustainable and fully circular value chain, where the biomass raw material sourcing derives from food processing side streams, to obtain, via a low footprint biochemical processing, a portfolio of bio-based biodegradable building block materials enabling the realisation of complex packaging structures, including laminates and multilayer films, to match key functional requirements of commercial petrochemical plastics, such as gas/ liquid barrier properties, mechanical resistance, cold temperature resistance, hot tack, among others, while enabling the realisation of a full set of packaging items from rigid to semi rigid and flexible by tuning the functionalisation of base resins through bio-synthesis and the compound processing. USABLE Packaging concept is designed to retrofit the existing state of the art packaging processing technology by controlling the chemical and physical properties of the base building blocks materials. With respect to petrochemical peers USABLE Packaging offers a sustainable end-of-life, since on one hand materials are biodegradable with no harm to the environment, on the other hand they have potential to deliver additional economic value through organic recycling for production of biogas, with the same consolidated disposal route as bio-waste, or through biotech recycling, to be used again as feedstock for the production of the same base resins for USABLE Packaging, basically closing again and again the same value chain to re-obtain virgin materials.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
28006 Madrid
Spain
See on map
Participants (24)
9042 Desteldonk Gent
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
48170 Zamudio
See on map
40126 Bologna
See on map
35017 PIOMBINO DESE PD
See on map
37134 Verona
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
00185 Roma
See on map
46980 Paterna
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
75007 Paris
See on map
8008 Zurich
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
43122 Parma
See on map
SG12 9HP WARE
See on map
11855 Athina
See on map
4470-177 Maia
See on map
15782 Santiago De Compostela
See on map
48022 Lugo
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
34090 Montpellier
See on map
44140 Le Bignon
See on map
2829 516 Caparica
See on map
59336 Tourcoing Cedex
See on map
51211 Matulji
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
47522 Cesena
See on map
48018 Faenza
See on map
63 004 Tulce
See on map
41900 KOCAELI
See on map