Today, World Food Day, is a time to reflect on a major global challenge: how do we feed a growing population while protecting our planet? A key part of the answer involves tackling waste—both the food we lose and the materials we use to produce it.
Plastic packaging helps us fight food waste by preventing spoilage and extending the shelf life of fresh produce. But it also creates a paradox. Packaging makes up nearly 40% of all plastic use in Europe. Yet, we recycle less than 40% of that plastic packaging waste.
The MoeBIOS project sees this as an opportunity for innovation. This World Food Day, we want to show why creating a circular economy for bio-based plastics is vital for a sustainable food future.
The challenge in our fields: protecting the foundation of our food
Our food system starts with healthy soil. However, modern farms use about 12.5 million tonnes of plastic products each year, including mulch films and irrigation tubes. Over time, these plastics break down into microplastics and contaminate our soil.
This pollution harms the soil’s structure and its ability to hold water. It also hurts helpful organisms like earthworms. Ultimately, this threatens crop yields and biodiversity.
The MoeBIOS project tackles this silent threat by developing dedicated recycling chains for bio-based agricultural plastics. Our goal is to turn this farm waste into new, high-performance agricultural films. We engineer these films to meet tough performance targets:
- Durability: They must resist UV degradation for over a year in the field.
- Strength: They need excellent mechanical properties to withstand tough weather conditions.
- High recycled content: We aim for at least 30% recycled content in the final product.
By creating a high-value end-product, we provide a clear incentive for collecting and recycling these materials, preventing soil pollution at its source.
The challenge on our shelves: closing the loop on food packaging
Food packaging is a modern necessity. However, its end-of-life creates a major sustainability bottleneck. Complex materials, food contamination, and inefficient sorting systems often cause us to lose valuable resources.
MoeBIOS is engineering a complete circular solution for bio-based food packaging. Our work focuses on a chain of innovation:
- Precision sorting for high purity: We improve sorting systems using AI, robotics, and advanced sensors. Technologies like Near-Infrared (NIR) help identify and separate target bioplastics from mixed waste. The goal is to achieve a material purity of over 90%—a critical first step for high-quality recycling.
- A Toolkit of recycling technologies: We know that one size doesn’t fit all. That’s why MoeBIOS uses a toolkit of different recycling methods:
- Advanced mechanical recycling: Our key innovation is a supercritical CO₂ (scCO₂) decontamination process. This method purifies recycled plastic pellets, removing contaminants so the material meets the strict safety standards for new food-contact packaging.
- Chemical and bio-recycling: For more complex waste, our researchers use the power of chemistry and biology. Innovative chemical and enzymatic processes break down polymers into their original molecular building blocks (monomers). We then use these high-purity monomers to create new, virgin-quality bioplastics.
- Upcycling into demanding applications: Finally, we must prove the value of these recycled materials. We are creating a thermoformed tray for ready-to-eat meals. This tray performs as well as, or even better than, traditional plastic trays. Our demonstrator must withstand pasteurization at 93°C and provide an excellent barrier against oxygen and moisture to keep food fresh and safe.
A circular vision for World Food Day
A truly sustainable food system is regenerative by design. We must look beyond the farm and the fork and consider the entire lifecycle of the materials we depend on.
This World Food Day, the MoeBIOS project is proud to develop real, science-based solutions that support this vision. We are proving that we can transform bioplastic waste into a valuable resource. By doing so, we invest in our planet’s health and our long-term food security.
Learn more
To follow MoeBIOS’s journey toward sustainable bioplastics recycling:
- Visit our project website
- Follow us on LinkedIn