Project description
Biodegradable PHA bioplastics produced by bacteria
Plastic waste represents a major threat to the aquatic system since its degradation can last up to 2 000 years. The European Parliament envisages a zero-plastic level by 2030 and conforms its legislature accordingly. This fact poses a serious challenge to the plastic industry, which must move to environmentally friendly solutions. PHA bioplastics that are biodegradable and produced by bacteria could emerge as an alternative. However, their high production costs make the technology uncompetitive. The EU-funded VEnvirotech project proposes a solution based on biotechnology that with the use of bacteria transforms organic waste into biodegradable PHA bioplastics at significantly lower costs. The innovative technology envisages reducing waste management costs by 30 % and bioplastic price by 50 %.
Objective
Every year 8M tonnes of plastics trash enter the sea. Plastic materials that leak into the environment are a global pollution problem as they may take up to 2.000 years to degrade. The European Parliament agreed on measures to eliminate single-use plastics by 2030 as part of the EU Plastics Strategy. We have to be aware about the need to shift our industry and the use of biodegradable bioplastics. A potential solution are PHA bioplastics, biodegradable and produced by bacteria. Unfortunately, because of their costly production process, currently marketed PHA (5-20€/kg) cannot compete with conventional plastics (1-2€/kg)
VEnvirotech Biotechnology is a biotechnology start-up founded in April 2018 aiming to offer a solution to the plastic problem by transform organic waste into biodegradable PHA bioplastics while using bacteria. Our innovation relies on the application of biotechnology to organic waste treatment processes at industrial scale to obtain a revalorized product in the form of bioplastic. We have developed two processes: a waste treatment process that uses bacteria to digest organic waste from industrial companies. By inducing feeding and famine cycles to bacteria with the grinded and fermented organic waste, bacteria accumulate PHA bioplastic as energy reserve. This selective pressure process is repeated in our VE-Box a portable processing plant capable of producing high quality PHA biodegradable bioplastics as added-value from organic waste. The bacteria with PHA is taken from the VE-Box to VEnvirotech’s centralized plants to extract, purify and formulate our VE-0plastic.
We can reduce by 30% the costs of waste management and by 50% the price of bioplastic. The opportunity in the global waste management market and bioplastics market represents a combined TAM of €447B by 2024. We have defined a commercialization strategy to start in Spain by 2022 and expand to Europe in the following years. By 2024 we expect to have €75M in revenues and a net profit of €11M
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processes
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterialsbioplasticspolyhydroxyalkanoates
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
08130 SANTA PERPETUA DE MOGODA
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.