As the bioplastics market grows*, it is essential to address the issue of recycling biodegradable bioplastics and to study their most effective recycling pathways to manage bioplastic products at their end of life. Bioplastic waste does not yet constitute a relevant amount of the total plastic waste (being only 1% in weight)**.
Efficient waste management of bioplastics is key to the European Commission’s flagship policy goals of a resource-efficient Europe and a circular economy vision. According to the European Commission Waste Framework Directive***, waste should be managed according to a precise hierarchy indicating a priority order in the legislation and policy for waste prevention and management: prevention; preparing for re-use; recycling; other recovery, e.g. energy recovery; and disposal.
In recent years, several projects, including BioSupPack, have been funded by the Horizon Programme for Research and Innovation and the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking to improve and scale up bioplastics recycling technologies. Recently, three new projects, MoeBIOS, ReBioCycle, and PROSPER, have kicked off to further scale up bioplastic recycling technologies.
This event connects experts working on novel or improved recycling technologies for bioplastics from academia and the private sector, offering expertise along the whole process of bioplastics waste management from the foundation (e.g., waste sorting and pretreatment, creation of value chains) to recycling technologies – mechanical, chemical and enzymatic/microbial recycling- to upscaling and the development of new applications, in particular packaging, textiles and agriculture.
The presentations at this event revolve around several recycling technologies: mechanical, chemical, enzymatic, and microbial. Projects that use and further develop them include ReBioCycle, MoeBIOS, PROSPER, BIOMAC and BioSupPack.
A short outline of the plans and activities of these projects is presented in the current document.
Additional materials are the following:
- Presentations of the event: https://zenodo.org/records/14384110
- Recording of the event: https://youtu.be/DtbKQxHc3ag
*www.european-bioplastics.org/bioplastics-market-development-update-2023-2/
*ReBioCycle factsheet https://zenodo.org/records/14038703
*https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/waste-framework-directive_en#ref-2023-amendment-to-the-waste-framework-directive