Unlocking the potential of Sustainable BiodegradabLe Packaging

USABLE Packaging will develop high performance plastic packaging through a sustainable and fully circular value chain, where the biomass raw material sourcing derives from food processing side streams, to obtain, via a low footprint biochemical processing, a portfolio of bio-based biodegradable building block materials enabling the realisation of complex packaging structures, including laminates and multilayer films, to match key functional requirements of commercial petrochemical plastics, such as gas/ liquid barrier properties, mechanical resistance, cold temperature resistance, hot tack, among others, while enabling the realisation of a full set of packaging items from rigid to semi rigid and flexible by tuning the functionalisation of base resins through bio-synthesis and the compound processing. USABLE Packaging concept is designed to retrofit the existing state of the art packaging processing technology by controlling the chemical and physical properties of the base building blocks materials. With respect to petrochemical peers USABLE Packaging offers a sustainable end-of-life, since on one hand materials are biodegradable with no harm to the environment, on the other hand they have potential to deliver additional economic value through organic recycling for production of biogas, with the same consolidated disposal route as bio-waste, or through biotech recycling, to be used again as feedstock for the production of the same base resins for USABLE Packaging, basically closing again and again the same value chain to re-obtain virgin materials.