Pablo Ariño speaks in this interview about the importance of conducting an exploitation strategy within the UPLIFT project.

What does the project exploitation consist of and why is it so important for the UPLIFT project?

The exploitation activities of UPLIFT project align with the H2020 EC-funded project’s goal of enhancing the impact of the project results by developing and creating actions and strategies towards the smooth transition to the market uptake of those technologies once the different technical innovations have been successfully validated.

Regarding the importance of exploitation within the UPLIFT project, I am pleased to share that we are committed to tackling one of the key concerns in modern society, which is plastic pollution. By ensuring a meaningful exploitation strategy for the double solution that the project is addressing (biochemical recycling and eco-designed plastic packaging) we are thriving to pave the way for the future adoption of these technologies in the European market landscape and therefore using them to overcome both societal and environmental problems concerning the plastic drawbacks.

What are the main challenges and opportunities of this task?

Due to the current low Technological Readiness Level (TRL) of the promising solutions that are being developed during the project, it is still challenging to specifically define the best market uptake strategy to guarantee the successful adoption of the food and drink plastic packaging industry. Furthermore, it is an iterative journey, and the technology transfer from the lab to the industry partners might shape the final strategy to be adopted.

On the other hand, there are a lot of opportunities that make the exploitation activities undoubtedly valuable for the project’s success, such as the opportunity to contribute significantly to reducing plastic pollution and advancing the European circular economy. Finally, it is worthwhile also to highlight the outstanding commitment of the consortium partners in contributing to co-creating these strategies and providing valuable insights to foster the potential market opportunity, enabling our role to conduct the exploitation activities to safeguard and maximise the potential impact of UPLIFT´s outcomes.

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Cristiano Varrone has more than 15 years of experience in Fermentation technologies and Eco-Engineering of microbial consortia for the conversion of waste streams into biofuels, green chemicals and biopolymers, following a Biorefinery concept. His overall research interest is within the development of Defined Mixed Consortia and Process Optimization with a strong focus on the biodegradation of recalcitrant compounds such as pesticides and plastics.

On March 24-25, 2023 he was invited as one of 40 delegates to join the World Plastic Summit for the launch of the World Plastic Association Monaco, under the patronage of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco (2022-2023). The idea was to speed up research and create cross-disciplinary collaboration among selected delegates

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Pablo Morales Moya, Communications Manager at Sustainable Innovations speaks in this interview about the importance of communication and dissemination in R&D projects and what are the keys to implementing an effective communication strategy.

As a Communications Manager, why do you think is important to have a task dedicated to communication and dissemination in the UPLIFT project?

In line with the objectives of the European Commission and the Green Deal, one of the main goals of the UPLIFT project is to contribute to achieving a 60% upcycling rate for plastic by 2030. This transformation should not be achieved solely by improving technology or processes, but also by raising awareness among citizens about the reasons and benefits of living in a society based on a circular economy. In this context, the importance of having a specific task for communication and dissemination within the UPLIFT initiative is twofold. On one hand, it involves communicating the progress, achievements, impacts, improvements, and technical developments that have been carried out. On the other hand, it involves creating messages that raise public awareness about recycling and upcycling, while also inspiring new solutions and innovations within the scientific community.

Considering the technical complexity of the UPLIFT project, how do you approach communicating its goals and achievements to the general public? Are there any specific strategies or channels you find particularly effective?

One of the main challenges we face as communications managers is having different audiences, from industrial and scientific stakeholders to the general public. The key strategy to engage with a wide audience is simple: different targets require different content.

For that reason, the communication in UPLIFT is tailored for each one. For example, sharing the partners’ scientific papers, publishing summaries of the technical milestones and organising webinars with European-related projects is a good practice to engage with the scientific community since they are familiar with the technical ideas and concepts. However, when we want to engage with the general public the messages and the content need to be different.

We have developed several initiatives to educate and raise awareness among the general public such as a joint factsheet with our sister projects UPPE-T and PRESERVE about the top five facts you must know about upcycling. Another example can be found in the video interview that I conducted with MVRDV, one of the top architecture studios where we discuss how the concept of upcycling is impacting not only in the plastic industry but also in other areas such as architecture. More examples can be found in the information published on the website where we have clearly defined the difference between upcycling and recycling as well as all the events, trade fairs and workshops that our partners have attended or the audiovisual content produced where we interview the partners as well as the official video explaining the main concept of UPLIFT with a user-friendly animated designed. Besides all that, we have participated in several awards such as the Sustainability Awards or the .EU Awards to boost and maximise the visibility of the project. Last but not least, all this information is compiled each semester in our biannual Newsletter to make sure our audience don’t miss the opportunity to read about all the different actions carried out.

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How is TECNARO contributing to upscaling and manufacturing?

The art of compounding is to compose a new material from different biopolymers, additives, and auxiliaries, all of which have different properties and processing characteristics.  Each biopolymer on its own has properties that only fit into a certain category (e.g. PLA is brittle and therefore cannot be processed well into films, only blending with other polymers and additives enables this application).  Therefore, compounding creates a completely new material. The difficulty is therefore to know or anticipate the exact interaction of the biopolymers with each other, but also the mutual influence of the properties. In the composition of the blend, both economic factors must be taken into account, i.e. the novel material should be able to compete with its properties with existing materials and be affordable, but also include the major benefits of biopolymers, such as an improved carbon footprint improved recyclability or degradability and complete biobasedness,. This new material should of course not only function in the laboratory extruder but should also be able to be processed on conventional equipment that is already used in industry.

What are the main challenges?

Tecnaro contributes with his knowledge to shape the biopolymers produced and supplied in the UPLIFT project into a compound that can be used in industrial applications. The manufacturing processes will be optimized and adapted for large-scale industrial use. The main challenges besides the compound composition are the optimization of the complete processing parameters, e.g. extruder throughput rates, extruder zone temperatures, and screw profiles, but also choosing the right pelletizing processes such as underwater pelletizing or strand pelletizing. The entire process should be easily adaptable by all users for their applications and possible without additional technical or financial effort.

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The concept of synthetic bacteria is increasingly attractive as we can artificially create a biocatalyst that can perform multiple desired functions. At Bioplastech, we strongly believe synthetic bacteria will make a huge contribution to the circular and bio-based economy.  For example, considering plastic pollution, natural bacteria cannot normally use man-made plastic as a carbon source as it lacks the machinery to break down the plastic backbone.  Synthetic biology tools could be applied first to build a microbial cell factory with artificial pathways which can degrade plastic waste into simple compounds and a second synthetic microbial factory could convert these plastic degradation products into a highly valuable product. At Bioplastech, we have developed different bioprocesses utilizing natural and synthetic microbial factories to produce various types of bioplastics and their monomers.  We have developed processes to convert degradation products of non-biodegradable plastics such as polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polystyrene (PS) into biodegradable plastic generally known as polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA).  PHAs are fully biodegradable elastomers, ideal for commodity and packaging applications. They can also be used in their pure form for medical devices or as blends or additives to enhance the flexibility and strength of other polymers.  Thus, by using synthetic microbial factories we are reducing the levels of harmful environmental plastic pollutants and creating high-value products that enable us to improve health, environment, and quality of life.

How Bioplastech is planning to overcome the risks?

It will certainly be challenging to bring the technology of upcycling waste plastic to biodegradable plastic using synthetic bacteria to the industrial scale in a short time.   Plastic degradation would give rise to a mix of compounds, some of them may be toxic to bacteria or not preferred by bacteria and this could affect the efficiency of the bioprocess to make valuable products such as biopolymers.  However, Bioplastech has extensive experience in defining, evolving, and realizing processes at lab and pilot scales with high product titres and high volumetric productivity. Bioplastech has a highly skilled team of scientists who have expertise in microbial biotechnology, synthetic biology, and fermentation technology which enable us to develop feed strategies, alter process control parameters, and engineer bacteria to meet specific needs. We are also collaborating with other industry and academic partners with specific know-how on plastic waste breakdown and the development of new sustainable plastic blends and packing materials. Thus, with extensive commercial experience, technical expertise, and industry collaboration Bioplastech is looking forward to increasing the rate of plastic recycling to contribute to the circular economy.

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What are the main responsibilities of BIO-MI?

Bio-Mi is R&D oriented SME from Croatia, founded in 2017 and manufacturer of biobased, biodegradable, and compostable thermoplastics materials and films that can be used for different applications such as primary and secondary packaging but also the agro sector such as mulch films.

Bio-mi is a synergy of 22 years of industrial manufacturing experience in the field of plastics and a young R&D team with strong experience in EU funds and programmes, especially in Horizon2020.

Our team is a team of professionals from different fields and with various abilities motivated in finding new solutions in substitution fossil with bio solutions.

Participation in projects was a strong base for the development and further production of bioplastics. In the last past years, all our R&D activities were focused on the development of MI family of materials. This family contains different formulations of different biomaterials and there are three main divisions of compounds according to their bio content. MI3 is a starch-based compound, MI6 is a PLA-based compound, and MI9 is PHA´s based compound.

MI3, a starch-based compound is the first produced compound with TUV certificates in Croatia, but also in east and southeast Europe. It is a certificated high-quality compound, cost-effective, and commercially available for any customer who wants to be a part of this „green story“.

Besides advanced engineering of sustainable materials and solutions, Bio-Mi does the internal projects with private companies and RTO´s providing them tailor-made solutions according to their needs.

Knowing how challenging is today for industry to move forward and start using more sustainable solutions when we talk in terms of packaging, but also we have to be aware of how much plastic waste this same industry produces, we are already in a race against time to do something and make some change.

How is BIO-MI coordinating the scale-up and manufacturing process?

Many European projects are tackling this problem and in the UPLIFT project, Bio-MI will do the same. Based on the outputs of the enzymatically recycling step, we will develop variously recyclable eco-materials and granulates and convert them into food and non-food packaging applications.

Bio-Mi is a leader of WP6 Scale-up and manufacturing and in the frame of this work package Bio-Mi will be responsible for scaling up the production of thermoplastic compounds for flexible packaging and from these developed compounds, Bio-Mi will scale up the production of sustainable and degradable/recyclable films and packaging. All scaling up activities for different packaging, Bio-Mi will do in close collaboration with Tecnaro and AIMPLAS.

In 2020. the global production capacities of bioplastics amounted to about 2,11 million tonnes with almost 47% of the volume destined for the packaging market-the biggest market segment within the bioplastics industry.

From these latest statistics, we can conclude that bioplastics packaging is driving the whole bioplastics industry and it is necessary for European Union to continue research activities performed in the scope of various European projects and on this way to boost the development of new more sustainable products, processes, and technical solutions so European market of bioplastics products can compete with the other global emerging markets.

Only a strong and competitive European bioeconomy is capable of addressing the grand societal challenges to make its citizens better life and to deal with all environmental issues which are the biggest challenges for today’s and future generations.

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