Usable Packaging

The USABLE PACKAGING project seeks to dramatically reduce the use of environmentally harmful fossil fuel-based packaging by developing high-performance bio-alternatives derived from food industry byproducts and food waste to cover packaging needs for food, drinks, pharmaceutical products and clothing.

Simultaneously these bio-based solutions will create a sustainable, circular value chain where the end-of-life processes for the products – either biodegradation, composting or recycling through anaerobic digestion – contribute towards the cycle that generates the feedstock and biogas needed to manufacture the next round of packaging materials, reducing further the impact of plastic waste on the environment.

The project will build up a complete new value chain where a low cost and widely available feedstock, such as by-products and side-streams of the food processing industry and the correlated biogenic CO2, is converted into poly-hydroxy-alkanoates (PHA) by advance processes using both mixed and pure microbial cultures. 

The main objectives of the project are the following:

• The creation of bio-packaging solutions to cover a wide range of packaging needs for food, drinks, pharma and clothing, based on bioplastics with adequate physical and chemical properties.
• The development of bio-packaging solutions with clear end-of-life scenario options, with economic added value such as organic recycling intended for anaerobic digestion or composting or else re-digestion to obtain new virgin PHA in a closed cycle.
• The definition of new vertically integrated and circular value chains where food-processing by-products/residues and biogenic CO2 are transformed into compostable and recyclable bio-packaging, via low-environmental-footprint processes.
• The optimization of PHA functionalization to match requirements for end-use in packaging.
• The optimization of the processes for transformation of functional PHA into packaging, including compounding functionalization extrusion, blown film process, multilayer
• The production of adhesive layers to replace petrochemical CASE peers, by on-line functionalization thus overcoming the current main bottlenecks for bio-based multilayer films.
• The reduction of the environmental footprint of the plastic packaging sector.
• Considering emissions, while local feedstocks supply network is considered, avoiding negative C-footprint through long distance transportation.

Logoplaste Innovation Lab serves on this project as one of the members of the Stakeholders Board.

PROJECT PROFILE 

Project name | USABLE PACKAGING - Unlocking the potential of Sustainable Biodegradable Packaging

Call | H2020 – BBI-JTI-2018-SO3.R10

Grant Agreement | Nº 836884

Project Coordinator | CSIC – Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas