Screenshot of speakers (and moderators) during the workshop on “Upcycling bioplastics from food & drink packaging”, 20 October 2021 © PRESERVE, upPE-T, UPLIFT

On 20 October 2021, the EU projects PRESERVE, UPLIFT, and upPE-T held a joint workshop with around 160 participants to introduce their initiatives on upcycling bioplastics to a wider audience and to strengthen their collaboration and clustering efforts. The reason behind the event was that the initiators are convinced that this type of cooperation is essential to expand the European knowledge base for R&D projects. Ultimately, it facilitates the scale up of innovative bio-based technologies and leads to industrial deployment as well as to the provision of growth and jobs over the coming decades.    

PRESERVE, UPLIFT, and upPE-T are three sibling projects that are aiming to transform food and drink packaging that currently cannot be recycled into new bio-based materials and products of better quality and with better environmental value. All three projects receive funding from the EU Horizon 2020 plan under the same topic call ‘Upcycling Bio Plastics of food and drinks packaging’ (CE-BIOTEC-09-2020). In total, the three projects comprise 58 partners from 19 European countries with a total budget of 23.3 million Euro.   

During the workshop, Hasso von Pogrell, Managing Director of European Bioplastics e.V. (EUBP) and PRESERVE consortium member as well as Aleksandra Branković, Senior Researcher at IRI (Institute for Development and Innovation) in Serbia, gave an overview of the European bioplastics sector. In particular, they focused on the EU regulatory and legislative landscape that is shaping these innovation & research projects. During the second part of presentations, Cristiano Varrone, Associate Professor in Fermentation Technology at the department of chemistry and bioscience of Aalborg University and Project Coordinator of UPLIFT, Aldo Ramirez, Project Manager at IRIS Engineering and Project Coordinator at PRESERVE, as well as Fuensanta Monzó, Responsible for R&D projects at CETEC Technological Center of Footwear and Plastic of the Region of Murcia and Project Coordinator of upPE-T, introduced the three sibling projects, showcasing their objectives, methodologies, impacts, and expected results.