EcoPlastiC · Eco conversion of lower grade PET and mixed recalcitrant PET plastic waste into high performing biopolymers

ECOPLASTIC is designed to provide a seamless route to resolving pervasive PET plastic pollution, converting it to Eco-plastic prototypes. Conversion of unrecyclable post use PET into new, high performance bioplastics embodies the regenerative zero waste approaches found in nature, where post use materials become the ingredients for new products and with unlimited cyclical use of materials. It proposes a technological paradigm shift in recycling from the current zero to single digit circuits of recycling loops to a regeneration process providing a significant scientific step forward towards true circularity. ECOPLASTIC converts lower grade PET and mixed recalcitrant PET plastic waste into high performing biopolymers, through the development of a suite of breakthrough modular and technologies adaptable to the waste input, to funnel waste PET plastics into Eco-products that enter a perpetually bio-cyclable loop. The new Eco-plastics and products will provide drop in alternatives for seamless adoption within industry and by consumers. We will demonstrate that the resulting processes are economically & environmentally sustainable for valorizing currently non-recyclable materials such as multilayer packages and flexible films. The project will combine several approaches to optimise the material circularity:I.Depolymerization process: Series of mechano-green, chemical and biocatalytic technologies to depolymerize them into their constituent monomers, using novel biological filtration for the preparation of highly fermentable monomer and oligomer feedstock streamsII.Biopolymer production using microbiome processing to produce new biopolymers from monomer feedstocks which are then processed into bioproduct prototypes that are not harharmful to the environmentIII.Advanced processing will be used to advance the properties of recovered biopolymers and demonstration prototypes for applications including packaging will be produced.