The climate neutrality, aimed by the EU to be reached by 2050, cannot be achieved without a significant change in the manufacturing sector. Reduction of its pollution and waste and increase of its reprocessing potential is a must to achieve a true circular and sustainable economy. The replacement of fossil raw materials by bio-based ones is crucial for the green transition of manufacturing industries. To lower the environmental impact to a greater degree, the bio-based products should be easy to reuse and recycle.

However, a transition from conventional materials to bio-based ones requires not only the development of new raw- materials (e.g. biopolymers), but also the adaptation or even implementation of new manufacturing routes for them. The textile, packaging and footwear sectors contribute in large-scale to the world pollution: 10% of the global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by clothing and footwear production and, in 2018, the generated packaging waste in the EU was estimated at 174.1 kg per inhabitant. Petrochemical-based materials used in textile, footwear and packaging sectors are a threat to the environment due to their non-biodegradable and non-renewable nature.

Waste2BioComp will have a significant impact on the reduction of the use of fossil-based materials, not only in the approached three value chains (textiles, packaging and footwear), which are highly resource and polluting intensive sectors, but also with potential for several other sectors and applications.

The project will run for 36 months, and it will be constituted by 13 partners from France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland