Why this conference?
While modern economies highly depend on plastics in Europe with consumes in the range of 50 million tons per year, only 25-31% of the plastic waste in Europe is currently recycled and the larger share is incinerated or even landfilled (high variability between countries). We still landfill nearly 40-50% of plastic waste. Today, in Europe 70% of the packaging used in a wide variety of applications in different market sectors – including food, pharmaceuticals and clothing – is not recyclable. It consists mostly of multi-layer packaging, with each layer composed of different polymers that perform specific functions, making it technically non-recyclable. The end-of-life phase for this packaging, therefore, is either incineration or landfill. Moreover, the compostable bio-based packaging that is currently available mainly ends up in industrial composting facilities. This is because other biological waste treatment processes like anaerobic digestion and home composters are generally not suitable for most of the current compostable polymers.

What are the Potential Solutions?
In the past few years several projects funded by the Bio-based Industries Joint Technology Initiative such as BIOnTop Project, Usable Packaging, CelluWiz, and many others have developed novel alternative solutions to ‘eco-design’ packaging products to avoid the incineration and landfill routes at their end-of-life phase, rerouting them instead towards approved and accepted applications, where they can add value without adding an environmental burden.

For whom is this conference?
This conference is open to representatives of projects and organisations working on the development bio-based packaging products that are biodegradable/ compostable and/or recyclable. It is open to research organisations, industrial representatives, but also to consumer organisations, recyclers and composting plant representatives.