Dear members,

Please find below an overview of the activities of European Bioplastics throughout December 2017 and January 2018. 

Regulatory Affairs (WG REGA)

In mid-December 2017, the trilogues on the revision of the EU waste legislation came to an end. The final documents have not been published yet. An analysis will be shared in the next monthly report.

With regard to the Fertilisers Regulation, the revision process ended with amendments from the European Parliament on the Commission's proposal that support biodegradable mulch films. On 25 January 2017, the first trilogue for this dossier took place, but the timing is still not clear, and, as the dossier is immense, it will take time until the parties get around to discussing our topic. In the meantime, we updated our position paper and revised our amendment paper (according to the adopted report of the Parliament and the position of the Council). We will inform our stakeholders in Commission, Parliament and Council about the recently published CEN standard EN 17033. Furthermore, we started organising a Parliamentary Event in March hosted by MEP Franc Bogovic to discuss biodegradable mulches with the trilogue parties. 

The Plastics Strategy was published by the Commission in mid-January and mentioned bio-based feedstock as well as biodegradable plastics. With regard to the latter, it mentioned the benefits of compostable plastics for certain applications such as bio-waste bags. It also asked to look further into biodegradability in marine environments and urged the industry to become clearer on communication and marketing claims. The Plastics Strategy will now be discussed in the Parliament, which will produce a report on this document. The Council will also prepare a position. Against this background, EUBP will develop a position paper and potential amendments to the Commission's document to refine the already neutral to positive input included in there. WG REGA also discussed to provide end-of-life relevant education events to our stakeholders in Brussels under this initiative's roof. 

Parallel to the Plastics Strategy, the Commission published a report on oxo-degradable plastics based on the Eunomia report published at the end of 2016. The Commission's report calls for the restriction of oxo-plastics in Europe and says legislative measures shall be developed. 

WG REGA will meet next on 16 February in Brussels. 

For detailed information on the work of the WG Regulatory Affairs, contact Kristy-Barbara Lange (lange@european-bioplastics.org). 

Product Groups

Product Group Bio-based

PG Biobased has met with all its members on 2 February in Berlin.

Task Force (TF) 1 (Sustainability evaluation) has successfully completed the development of an estimation of land use for bioplastics. The resulting methodology document will be published in the upcoming weeks. Furthermore, the TF is currently working on a position on LCA and a collection of available LCI data for bioplastics.

TF 2 (End of life) is currently designing a position on mechanical recycling and also incineration of bioplastics. The starting point is the existing Fact Sheet on mechanical recycling. The TF plans a conference call in February.

TF 3 (Chemicals and intermediates) has prepared a draft mapping of existing building blocks for bioplastics and biopolymers and is currently further refining the content of this document. The mapping will be used for a background paper.

EUBP has furthermore participated in the 2^nd stakeholder workshop of an Austrian project: Bioplastics Scenario for 2050. The resulting publication is open for comments until mid of February and will be used for policy recommendations in Austria, and potentially also in a European context.

Contact: Constance Ißbrücker (issbruecker@european-bioplastics.org)

Product Group Biodegradables

The PG plans to revise the background paper on EN13432 certified plastics in industrial composting plants and will furthermore update the meta study about the behaviour of bioplastic films in mechanical recycling.

Contact: Constance Ißbrücker (issbruecker@european-bioplastics.org)

Working Group Standardisation

With the beginning of this year, the ad hoc working group EN13432, which previously worked under the umbrella of the PG Biodegradables, has been transferred to a new separate Working Group Standardisation. In case you would like to participate in this WG, please contact us. The first meeting is planed for spring 2018. EUBP will intensify its activities in standardisation within this year and already participated in the January meeting of CEN/TC 261/SC4/WG 2, which currently develops a standard for home-compostable carrier bags. Furthermore, EUBP participated in a meeting of CEN/TC 411 on 11 January. Under CEN/TC 249 (Plastics), a new working group WG 24 has been founded at the end of 2017, which is called “Environmental aspects”. EUBP participated in the meeting on 25 January as a guest, but strives to become a full member by a delegation via DIN in the coming weeks.

Contact: Constance Ißbrücker (issbruecker@european-bioplastics.org)

Communications

Please find in the following links a selection of relevant media clippings from December 2017 and January 2018.

In case you missed the last issues of our ‘Bioplastics Bulletin’, you can read it here (December 2017) and here (January 2018).

On 16 January 2018, the European Commission published its long-awaited EU Strategy on Plastics in a Circular Economy. EUBP reacted with a press release, welcoming the strategy, but at the same time pointing out the missed chance to fully embrace the benefits of bio-based plastics and biodegradable plastics in the strategy. You can read our press release here.

In December, we updated our publications, incl. fact sheets, background papers, and brochures available on our website in order to include our recent market data update and the latest developments. All updated publications are available for download on our website.

The Working Group Communications is currently gathering support and financial contributions to produce a series of short animated video clips on the nature and benefits of bioplastics. The videos will be used online and on social media and are aimed at the general and interested public in order to correct some of the most common misunderstandings about bioplastics. We will be working with an illustrator based in the UK who’s worked for a lot of pretty big brands, including the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and their New Plastics Economy Initiative. The funding needed for the videos is €30-40,000. The project will be funded through contributions from our members. We therefore kindly ask you to check and indicate whether you can contribute budget towards the realisation of this project.

For more information on the video project, or in case you have any questions concerning the communications activities of EUBP, please contact Katrin Schwede (schwede@european-bioplastics.org).

Events

A successful 12th European Bioplastics Conference 2017

The 12th edition of the European Bioplastics Conference took place on 28/29 November 2017 in Berlin. It was yet another successful meeting of the industry with over 330 participants from 200 companies and 30 countries connecting and catching up on the latest developments and trends in the bioplastics industry in Europe. 36 companies showcased a great diversity of the newest products, materials, and applications at the exhibition alongside the conference. European Bioplastics extends a special thank you to the sponsors of this year’s conference: BASF, BIOTEC, DIN CERTCO, NatureWorks, Sulzer, and Total Corbion PLA, for their support. You can read the full review in press release from 30 November.

Save the date! The 13^th European Bioplastics Conference will take place on 4/5 December 2018 at the Titanic Chaussee Hotel in Berlin, Germany. The Call for Papers will be distributed in March 2018.

If you would like more information about the European Bioplastics Conference or discuss how to get involved this year, please get in touch with Joanna Wilde (wilde@european-bioplastics.org).  

Research Projects

In December 2017, the Polybioskin project’s half annual consortium meeting took place in Pisa. The project is progressing as planned, and a public project deliverable led by EUBP as well as another key deliverable with EUBP as a lead contributor have been submitted in January. EUBP is planning to host the next project meeting in Berlin at the end of April, and dissemination and communication from the project consortium is set to increase in the coming weeks and months.

The project proposals submitted in September with EUBP as part of the consortium have unfortunately not made it to the grant agreement stage, despite generally high average scores, including a 14/15 points score for the highest ranked proposal.

EUBP, as part of an international expert consortium composed of academic as well as industry partners, has submitted a first-stage proposal for the two-stage H2020 Industrial Sustainability call (H2020-NMBP-ST-IND-2018-2020) in January.

Constance Ißbrücker contributed as a member of the expert panel to the first STAR-ProBio Project Focus Group Webinar moderated by consortium partner Technical University Berlin on 29 January. You can find out more about the project and the Focus Group on http://www.star-probio.eu/2018/02/first-star-probio-focus-group-webinar/.

If you would like to find out more, please get in touch with Götz Ahrens (ahrens@european-bioplastics.org).

Planned activities February 2018

• WG Regulatory Affairs: preparation of strategic planning meeting on 15 January 2018, Brussels;
• WG Regulatory Affairs: gathering of intelligence on timelines for Fertilisers Regulation; WG Regulatory Affairs: monitoring of last development regarding waste trilogues in 2017
• Update Feedstock paper (TF1)
• Preparation of compilation of LCA data (TF1)
• Update Fact Sheet Mechanical Recycling (TF2)
• Mapping of bio-based building blocks (TF3)
• Update of the next draft on the Background Paper on compostable plastics and the recycling meta study (PG Biodegradables)
• WG Comms: collect funding for the production of short animated video series on bioplastics

If you have any suggestions regarding the content and/or format of our monthly report, please do not hesitate to share them with us. 

This email is sent to all the contacts of our member companies that we have registered in our database. If you would like to share it with further colleagues, kindly send us an email to members@european-bioplastics.org

Kind regards, 
Hasso v. Pogrell