Bio-based plastics are wholly or partly derived from biomass and so help reduce reliance on fossil fuel-based plastics.
Feedstocks include primary and secondary sources. Agricultural and forestry residues and post-consumption organic waste have lower environmental impacts than primary feedstock but collection and transportation issues make scaling up a challenge.
As a whole, the sector is struggling to achieve real scale: bio-based plastics account for only 0.5% of global plastics production and are projected to reach 1% by 2030.
Scaling is hampered by feedstock sustainability, competitiveness, technological maturity and cost: currently, producing bio-plastic is generally 1.5 to 2 times more expensive than conventional plastics.
Applications are now open to host EU Green Week 2026 partner events! Organisations interested in hosting a partner event are invited to apply by 20 March.
The FertiCovery project focuses on nutrient recovery and the production of fertilisers from biowaste, manure and wastewater.
This workshop will look at the upscaling potential of the 25 technologies assessed by the project and examine the regulatory frameworks governing them, including barriers and enablers.
The EU-funded Wood2Wood project aims to improve resource efficiency by recovering high value material from polluted wood found in industrial and urban waste streams.
The PROMOFER project aims to produce circular biobased products for use in the agriculture, packaging and textiles sectors from low value, renewable feedstocks (specifically starches, whey permeate, industrial wastewater, rice straw, wheat straw and prune waste). They've just taken stock of progress to date!
RUNFASTER4EU is a new Horizon Europe Innovation Action which aims to show that it is possible to use unproductive, polluted or otherwise unused land to grow crops as feedstock for biobased products. This approach does not take land away from food or feed production while supporting the EU's bioeconomy.
Find out about a new EU-funded project! MARMADE aims to use crustacean residues and seaweed as the raw material to produce sustainable, high-value food and feed ingredients.
