MOEBIOS, improvement in the management and recycling of biological plastic waste in the textile, agriculture, and packaging sectors.

The MOEBIOS Project takes on the challenges of bioplastic recycling in three key value chains: plastic packaging, synthetic textiles, and agricultural plastic waste. In plastic packaging, inappropriate classification and recycling technologies allow for only 6.3% recycled content in the EU packaging market. Synthetic textiles contribute significantly to plastic waste worldwide, as only 0.06% of all textile waste is normally recycled into new textile products. In agriculture, poor waste management practices mean that bioplastic waste ends up in landfills, which contributes to harming the environment. Moreover, the recycled plastic content in agricultural applications is below 22%.

The goal of the MOEBIOS Project is to develop innovative processes for recycling bioplastics, generating high-added-value products. This includes integrating recycling into the existing industry, focusing on bioplastics which do not currently have recycling methods, advancing in mechanical recycling, improving enzymatic degradation for biorecycling, optimizing chemical recycling, and creating new scale routes based on real industry scenarios.

MOEBIOS will promote the industrialization of bioplastic recycling processes, creating significant benefits. It will allow for 232,505 tons of mixed bioplastic waste to be processed annually, it will increase the recycled content in new products, and it will develop efficient systems to classify and recycle plastic materials which have a biological origin. It will also improve the environmental results along the value chain when compared to fossil or biological references, it will encourage social acceptance of circular solutions, and it will ease future optimization of recycling and manufacturing according to the user’s needs. Furthermore, it will establish new connections for industrial symbiosis between different actors along the value chain, introduce three innovative products into emerging markets, generate knowledge about waste flows, and prevent 232,505 tons of plastics from ending up in landfills or incinerators, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 178 tons annually. Finally, it will produce recycled plastic monomers to replace fossil equivalents with biological ones.

The project, coordinated by ITENE, brings together 22 European partners, and is a 4-year-long project which began in June 2024.