On December 3, the monthly MIX-UP’s guest lecture counted on the presence of Cristiano Varrone, project coordinator of UPLIFT’s project where he introduced the UPLIFT project.

Cristiano showcased the overall concept of the initiative as well as the objectives, methodology, and impacts, emphasising the process from Biorefineries to renewable building blocks for plastics.

There, he explained the main idea to integrate the fossil-based (depolymerised) plastic monomers with bio-based (fermented) building blocks, to obtain more carbon-neutral polymers.

The main idea of MIX-UP (MIXed plastics biodegradation and UPcycling using microbial communities) is to showcase a novel approach for plastic recycling and therefore addresses one of the greatest challenges of our time: the establishment of a circular (bio)-economy for plastics.