The proceedings of the EUBP side event to the EBC 25 conference focused on the “Bioplastic Packaging Design: Safe, Sustainable and Recyclable”.
The key question was how to design bioplastic packaging that is safe, sustainable, recyclable, and compliant. Five projects have been funded in 2025 under a specific call of the Horizon Europe programme to collectively advance the next generation of biodegradable polymer materials and drive the transition toward sustainable packaging solutions across Europe: E-OILE’, BioPackMan, UPCYCLE, GRECO and Be-UP. Building on the strategic priorities outlined in the funding call, these projects will deliver innovative materials and robust evidence to support the packaging industry’s shift away from conventional plastics toward environmentally responsible alternatives. Each funded project addresses at least four of the following integrated activities.
Development and Scale-up of Advanced Biodegradable Polymers: The projects will develop, demonstrate, and scale up novel, advanced biodegradable polymer materials and innovative production processes that enable large-scale production with economies of scale comparable to existing methods. The materials will demonstrate improved or comparable technical performance, production costs, and end-of-life characteristics relative to current PP, PE, PET, and conventional biodegradable polymers.
Production System Innovation: The funded projects will develop cost-effective additives and catalysts to support industrial-scale production of biodegradable polymers, ensuring that the manufacturing processes are economically viable and technically robust.
Life Cycle and Techno-Economic Assessment: The projects will provide extensive evidence through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA) demonstrating that the costs of the novel, advanced biodegradable polymer products are not significantly higher than those of existing polymer products (PE, PP, PET) currently on the market. This analysis will provide the economic justification for industry adoption.
Pilot-Scale Production and Testing: The funded projects will scale up packaging-material production to pilot scale, enabling practical demonstration and validation in real-world applications.
Biodegradability Pathway Characterisation: The projects will identify and rigorously test the biodegradability pathways in all environmentally relevant conditions for the application of the developed materials. This includes comprehensive assessment across various relevant forms (landfill, compost, soil, litter in marine environments, continental freshwater, and marine offshore environments), supported by extensive quantified risk analysis from both human and environmental perspectives.
Environmental Impact Assessment: The funded projects will conduct a thorough assessment of all biodegradable intermediates and end products, including quantifying their contributions to GHG emissions. They will model the complete lifetimes of the developed polymers along their biodegradation pathways under environmentally relevant conditions across human, terrestrial, and marine environments, as well as in waste processing facilities.
Biodegradability Demonstration in Real Conditions: The projects will demonstrate complete biodegradability and compostability in all relevant conditions and environmental compartments, including landfill, compost sites, litter in marine and continental freshwater environments, and offshore marine environments. This work will identify the main environmental conditions influencing biodegradation rates and pathways and assess their impact.
The event took place on 1 December 2025 in Berlin, as a side event to the EBC 2025. This booklet presents all the projects pitching at the event, those invited to the matchmaking, and those invited for longer talks. This version (V2) also contains the longer abstracts for the projects presented in the first session.
Presentations: https://zenodo.org/records/17792786
Proceedings
Cite as: Bearzotti, C., Lopez-Hermoso, E., Varrone, C., Ferrero Aguar, P., Jiménez Aguilar, A., Planas Martinez, A., Behage, J., Bikiaris, D., Suárez, M. J., EL BIR, S., LORENZO NAVARRO, M., Charitidis, C., Kosanovic Milickovic, T., Gkartzou, E., Cavalie, G., Deckers, P., Pels, J., O’Connor, K., & Gobius du Sart, G. (2026). Bioplastic Packaging Design: Safe, Sustainable and Recyclable. An overview (Booklet of the Workshop 1 December 2025). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19258813