Dissemination

ECOFUNCO project is coordinating a workshop focused on bio-based materials, with the aim of sharing the expertise gained during the project. The partners involved will deliver presentations on a variety of topics, from chemical extraction of bio-based molecules to sustainability assessment. Furthermore, representatives from the ECOFUNCO advisory board and the BionTop project have been invited to expand the impact of the talks.

The workshop will be held on Wednesday 16 June 2021, from 9.30 to 18 (online) and it is free of charge.

Follow this link in order to register to the event: https://www.ecofunco.eu/workshop

Deadline for registration is on Monday 14 June 2021. All that register will receive a link to the workshop by email 1-2 days before the event.

The eighth edition of the .eu Web Awards has started, and BIOnTop's homepage is one of its nominees, being part of the .eu-Top Level Domain family. Feel free to support us in the competition and make your vote for BIOnTop here until 5 August 2021: https://webawards.eurid.eu/?q=biontop.eu The 18 finalists (three from each category) will be announced on 16 August 2021 and invited to the .eu Web Awards Gala in September 2021, where the six winners will be announced, one from each category. The winners will get a premium prize package, including a three-month billboard advertising campaign at Brussels Airport, a custom-made promotional video, and a trophy. The .eu Web Award is an online competition that started in 2014. It is meant to honour websites with an appealing design, high-quality content, and strict security rules. The award is presented in six categories utilizing the .eu top-level domain, helping to create a common European internet identity. The .eu Web Award is hosted by EURid (European Registry for Internet Domains), a non-profit organisation based in Diegem near Brussels, Belgium. EURid is responsible for the operational and technical management of the .eu top-level domain on behalf of the European Commission since 2003.

Rafael Alonso, the main researcher of the BIOnTop Project at AIMPLAS, participated in the online event "Towards A Sustainable Industrial Chemistry Model In Europe", discussing the European chemical industry's new challenges of adapting to sustainability and circularity, which are indispensable to overcome current limitations: product and process life cycle linearity, resource constraints, greenhouse gases and pollution, and the need for decarbonization, among others. The progress of six BBI JU projects – among them BIOnTOP, presented by Rafael Alonso – gave an overview of the initiatives' progress and current success in manufacturing high value-added raw materials from renewable sources or by-products and developing fully recycled and recyclable packaging materials. The webinar, held on 18 May 2021, was kindly hosted by TECNALIA, which is a leading Research and Technological Development Centre in Europe, whose mission is to transform technology into GDP to improve people’s quality of life by creating business opportunities for companies, being a member of BRTA (Basque Research and Technology Alliance).

In its first year, the European project BIOnTop has achieved good results in its experimental work on copolymers and compounds with customized biodegradability and multifunctional coating solutions with customized properties. Although these tasks are currently ongoing, the first trials have shown promising results. 
Another task performed in this first year was defining the specifications for PLA-based products with customized end of life and properties. Two technical deliverables and one scientific paper have been published with these initial project results. The first deliverable is an extensive review of the state of the art, including scientific papers, patents and commercial information on biodegradable household packaging and textiles. The information in this deliverable was consulted to write the paper Bio-Based Packaging: Materials, Modifications, Industrial Applications and Sustainability, published in the international scientific journal Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). The second deliverable consists of a compilation of information on commercial biopolymers, additives and monomers, including suppliers and prices, in order to select the source materials to be used to start working with the laboratory scale-up formulation in upcoming project activities. All three documents are accessible through this website (dissemination-publications).  The paper is also available on the journal website.

Rafael Alonso, main researcher of BIOnTop Project at AIMPLAS, participated on the 2nd day (13/05/2020) of the 13th International Conference on Bio-based materials organized by nova-Institut GmbH. This conference is the second largest event on bio-based materials in Europe, with around 250 participants and 30 exhibitors, and continues to expand. Due to the Corona crisis, this year's conference couldn't take place in its established and appreciated format but it was held online.

Rafael Alonso was one of the selected speakers with its presentation "Novel bio-based polymers and biomolecules for sustainable packaging developments". He presented BIOnTop and three more projects in which AIMPLAS is involved on this subject.

Researchers from the EU-funded project REFUCOAT presented key outcomes during their virtual event “From plastics to policy: how can we improve the performance of food packaging?” The event was held in two parts:

• Session 1 on Tuesday 5 May: Environmental and regulatory challenges related to bio-plastics
• Session 2 on Thursday 7 May: The technology behind bio-plastics

Over 100 participants gathered online to hear presentations about key results coming from the project which will end in September 2020.

Elodie Bugnicourt, from our partner IRIS and also partner in REFUCOAT Project, mentioned BIOnTop's approach in the presentation Recycling of complex packaging structures.

See presentation

Find more about REFUCOAT event (all presentations)

Kick-off Meeting of the BIOnTop Project, coordinated by AIMPLAS, was held on the 17th and 18th June 2019.

The four-year project aims at delivering bio-based recyclable-by-design cost competitive packaging solutions that can be mechanically recycled, industrially or home compostable, or suitable for anaerobic digestion.

Leading experts from 21 organisations based in 8 European countries form the project consortium. At this first meeting, they could share their general view of the project and to plan in detail the steps to be taken in the next 6 months.

During this first stage of the project, the progress will focus on the definition of specifications for PLA derived products with tailored end of life and properties and the development of copolymers and compounds with tailored biodegradability.

During the meeting, partners also visited AIMPLAS’s facilities, where the meeting was held.