Bioplastics that have no impact and that, on the contrary, make it possible to close the waste cycle in a circular economy perspective. We have the technologies to recover material and energy from wastewater and food waste.
The packaging of tomorrow will be biodegradable and have an extremely low impact. Bottles, food packaging, films made from biopolymers derived from the industrial processes of the agri-food supply chain. A recovery of material and energy, often from what has until now been considered waste — even in legislative terms — which, in a circular economy perspective, re-enters the production process. This is the case with the Biocosì project by Enea (the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), which aims to use wastewater from the dairy supply chain to produce bioplastic for food packaging, biodegradable and compostable.
The project, carried out by the research body and the Apulian start-up EggPlan, made it possible to develop a membrane separation process for the fractionation of whey and the subsequent recovery of whey proteins, peptides, lactose and mineral salts, as well as water. From here, the lactose can be further processed for the production of bioplastic for packaging. "This innovation, inspired by the principles of the circular economy with the goal of 'zero waste at the end of the process', responds not only to ethical and environmental needs but also to economic ones, linked to the high costs of disposing of dairy effluents, and furthermore makes it possible to cut the unit cost of producing the biopolymer by approximately 23 per cent," said Valerio Miceli of Enea's biotechnology and agro-industry division in a press release.
An innovation that could give enormous value to what today is simply waste and that accounts for almost 80 per cent of the processing of milk for the production of butter and cheese: dairy wastewater. Non-toxic, it is in fact extremely rich in lactose, proteins and peptides — substances and molecules that can be intercepted rather than simply disposed of. "This proposal," Miceli explains, "can also represent an additional source of wealth in terms of profitability for the dairy companies themselves, for the stakeholders operating along the supply chain and for innovative SMEs that aim to increase the competitiveness of their territory by diversifying their product offering."
The entire research community is taking major strides towards material recovery, in an industrial process capable of being genuinely sustainable. The Bioproto project (Bioplastic production from tomato peel residues), developed by the Iit (Istituto italiano di tecnologia) and led by Dr Athanassia Athanassiou, has investigated methods for recovering tomato skins and the subsequent production of biopolymers that can be used to create sustainable packaging. At the Cnr-Istm (Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche – Istituto di scienze e tecnologie molecolari), Nicoletta Ravasio is also studying a plastic reinforced with plant fibre derived from hemp oil.
While on the one hand there is an enormous availability of raw material (the waste in question), on the other hand the industrial processes involved are still costly and not very competitive. Even so, according to European Bioplastics, the European association of the bioplastics supply chain, global bioplastics production capacity is set to grow by approximately 50 per cent within a few years, reaching 6.1 million tonnes in 2021.