UPLIFT
Upcycling Bio Plastics of food and drinks packaging
Objectives
- To combine bio-depolymerization of plastics and bio-based building blocks to obtain smarter and renewable plastic materials, which will enable the effective upcycling of plastic packaging waste streams.
- To fully integrate the bio-chemical upcycling technologies within already existing and more mature recycling processes and fermentation processes. All these prototype materials and processes will be tested in a relevant operational scale close to expected performance.
- Eco-design to increase recyclability of the new eco-polymersance.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº 953073
Description
Recycling facilities are currently struggling when dealing with challenging plastic multi-layers, blends, and additives. Consequently, packaging plastics are mostly landfilled, incinerated or spilled into the environment.
The overall idea of UPLIFT (sUstainable PLastIcs for the Food and drink packaging industry) is to biologically depolymerize bio- and fossil-based plastic packaging waste and convert it into more renewable and easily upcyclable polymers, following a biorefinery approach.
UPLIFT will address the full plastic packaging value chain, from monomer production to packaging material manufacturing and back to end of life reusing and recycling options.
