A circular bioplastic economy for the future - Loop design and demonstration of its functionality in the praxis" (acronym BIOLOOP)

Demand for bioplastics is rising and with more sophisticated biopolymers, applications, and products emerging, the market is continuously growing and is predicted to grow by 18.8% over the next five years. However, even if these bioplastics are considered as a very promising alternatives to traditional plastics (avoiding the use of fossil resources, and offering more options at their End-of-Life - EoL - than conventional plastics), they are almost systematically considered as a polluter of the existing EoL management systems (adding complexity to the current sorting step). The BIOLOOP project aims to develop new systemic circular economy innovations to better manage the bioplastics sector, especially at their end of life. All bioplastics will be considered and three EoL will be favoured thanks to their circularity: recycling, composting and anaerobic digestion. With its 24 partners from 6 countries, the BIOLOOP consortium is representative of the complete value chain: bioplastics specialists, end products manufacturer, recycler, composter/anaerobic digester, R&D support, logistics experts, standardisation body, life cycle analyst, dissemination and exploitation experts, and market study specialists. The BIOLOOP concept is based on the definition of new circular models to bring together the whole value chain of bioplastics and improve the lifecycle management of these materials and products. To do so, several innovations will be further developed: systemic circular models considering logistics, business model, technical and environmental criteria, innovative materials additives, and enhanced EoL recovery routes. The BIOLOOP project will test these systemic improvements on three different local pilot loops across Europe (France, Austria/Germany, Italy) to demonstrate its performances in operational conditions. Thanks to these demonstrations, new standardisations, certifications and methodology to assess the best recovery route per bioplastic will be created.