Daily News

A University of Akron (UA) professor’s latest development in bioplastics has the potential to make important strides in sustainability for future plastics.

Products made from bio-based plastics must undergo the same testing procedures as conventional plastic products to access the market of the European Union (EU), in order to exclude any health risk for consumers.

ReSolute, the Flagship EU project focused on creating a new, sustainably-sourced, safer alternative to traditional, fossil-based solvents, launches today.

Scientists at NREL - the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy – have come up with what they claim is a ‘groundbreaking method for producing renewable polyurethane without toxic precursors’.

Evonik and Siemens Energy have started up a pilot plant sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) that uses carbon dioxide and water to produce chemicals.

A recent invention of 3D printable printing material from U.S. Navy scientists could make the underwater equipment strategically left in the ocean biodegradable.

A new European project called ELIOT project, in which, among other partners, Dutch research centre TNO is taking part, has been launched to study and develop at large scale the most promising recycling methods for biocomposites – especially the materials now being used in the aerospace industry.

It was an attractive idea, but was it true? A few years ago, the first reports of wax moth caterpillars being able to eat and digest plastic surfaced in the press. The news was received with excitement, with some even hopefully talking of a breakthrough in plastic waste management.

Carbiolice, a French start-up developing and producing biobased, biodegradable and compostable plastic solutions has joined forces with agricultural film manufacturer Barbier Group to develop a new PLA-based mulch film.

The BIOnTop project has come to the end of the first of the in total four years which this project will span.

The BBI project CHAMPION, which started in June 2020, will develop a large number of new, safe biobased materials for circular applications. This new library of biobased materials will bring the circular ambitions of the European Union a step closer.

A faster, more efficient way of recycling plant-based "bioplastics" has been developed by a team of scientists at the Universities of Birmingham and Bath.

Over the next three years, Senbis in Emmen, the Netherlands, will be investing €5.5 million through its new subsidiary SPIC Facilities BV, in a testing facility for the development of sustainable plastics.

BioNanocel project, funded by the Economy, Business and University department of the Andalusian government, will produce high-value packaging intended to preserve food better and longer.

A thousand litres of seawater can contain up to 8.3 million particles of microplastics. Until now, identifying these very small particles has been difficult – usually they are only detected once they have accumulated in the bodies of fish.

Carbios, a company pioneering new bio-industrial solutions to reinvent the lifecycle of plastic and textile polymers, announces the publication of an article in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, entitled “An engineered PET-depolymerase to break down and recycle plastic bottles”.

Russian researchers from the Federal Research Clinical Center of Physical-Chemical Medicine, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and Lomonosov Moscow State University have demonstrated that two incompatible components—a protein and a polymer—can successfully be blended in a single electrospun fiber.

Royal DSM, a global science-based company in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living, today announces that it has awarded Professor Marc Hillmyer, from the Chemistry Department at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, with the 2020 Bright Science Award in materials sciences.

Dr. Christophe LeMoine and Dr. Bryan Cassone of BU’s Department of Biology have found that waxworms, the caterpillar larvae of the greater wax moth, can survive on a diet of polyethylene, a type of plastic used in shopping bags and many other applications.

Researchers at the University of Oulu’s Research Unit of Sustainable Chemistry have developed a new synthetic bioplastic that, unlike traditional carbon-based plastics or other bioplastics, provides protection from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.

An 11-strong European consortium has secured funding for an innovative project to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of generating waste sugars derived from household waste and producing a range of high-performance bio-based materials and products.

A recent study by Wageningen University & Research (WUR), Netherlands, analysed the fate of compostable packaging products in a full- scale industrial organic waste treatment facility.

Apparently, microbes like MacDonald’s as well. Researchers at U of T Scarborough have for the first time turned waste cooking oil from a local MacDonald’s deep fryer into a high-resolution, biodegradable resin for 3D printing.

BioBTX has successfully attracted the financing it needs to takes the first steps along the path towards the realisation of a commercial-scale plant to produce platform chemicals from waste plastics based on a fully circular and sustainable process. The new plant will represent an important asset for the north of the Netherlands.

Researchers from Ireland’s Athlone Institute of Technology’s Materials Research Institute are spearheading a major pan European Chinese research effort aimed at tackling plastic pollution - a global crisis of prodigious proportions.

The “Best CO2 Utilisation 2020” innovation award, which recognises innovations in the field of Carbon Capture & Utilisation (CCU) is pleased to welcome a new co-organiser: CO2 Value Europe. Entries for the award, which gives pioneers in the field of Carbon Capture & Utilisation (CCU) the opportunity to present and market their CO2-based product or CCU technology at one of the world’s leading and best-known conferences on the subject of CO2 as feedstock, may be submitted until 31 January 2020.

Biotechnology company Circa Group has announced it is leading the consortium for new EU project ReSolute – a flagship Horizon 2020 project set to develop the first commercial plant to produce Cyrene a new, sustainably-sourced, safer alternative to traditional, fossil-based solvents.

Novozymes has recognised the achievements of professor James C. Liao, President of Academia Sinica, Taiwan with the 2019 Novozymes Award, which he earned for his ‘original and fundamental breakthroughs in microbial synthesis of fuels and chemicals from renewable resources’, according to Jens Nielsen, professor at The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability and CEO at BioInnovation Institute in Denmark.

The prestigious Global Bioplastics Award, presented annually at the end of the first day of the European Bioplastics conference, was won this year by Bio4Self, a consortium of research institutes and companies collaborating on a project to develop self-reinforced composites based on PLA fibres.

At the recent Raw Materials Summit 2019 in Berlin, the discussion centred on how waste, plants, CO2 - the resources of the future – can propel the transition away from a throwaway society. ‘Products must be recycled in an ecologically efficient manner’.