Renewable Materials Conference 2026 puts one question at the center: will your bioplastic packaging survive contact with an existing recycling line, or will sorting facilities reject it, send it to landfill, or contaminate a stream that was working fine before it arrived?
That question sits at the centre of a workshop MoeBIOS joins on 24 September, at the Renewable Materials Conference 2026 in Siegburg. Organised by European Bioplastics, “Rethink the Circularity of Your Products: From Biodegradability to Recyclability” runs from 11:20 to 12:50, and it matters for anyone who makes, sorts, or specifies bioplastic packaging right now.
Why This Question Matters Right Now
The EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation started applying its first provisions in August 2026. By 2030, every package placed on the EU market must be recyclable. That deadline is not abstract. It changes what “recyclable” needs to mean in practice, not just on a label.
A bioplastic can be biodegradable in a lab test and still fail inside a real sorting facility. Sorting equipment reads material by signal, not by intention. If a sorter can’t identify a bioplastic correctly, it treats that material as contamination. Contamination gets rejected, landfilled, or sent to incineration, the opposite of what a circular system needs.
That gap between lab performance and real-world sorting is exactly what the workshop puts on the table.
What the Workshop Covers
Four speakers approach the same problem from different points in the value chain. Jan Pels from TORWASH works on material recovery technology. Gerrit Gobius du Sart from TotalEnergies Corbion develops PLA bioplastics. Miriam Lorenzo Navarro from ITENE represents MoeBIOS and speaks to sorting and recycling trials in progress. Steven Verstichel from Normec OWS brings end-of-life testing expertise.
Together, they cover the full path a package takes: from material design, through sorting, to what actually happens at end of life. That’s the path where biodegradability and recyclability either work together or collide.
MoeBIOS’s Role in Answering It
MoeBIOS builds sorting and recycling technology for bioplastics that don’t yet have reliable recovery routes: PLA, PHA, PBS and PEF. The project works across three value chains, packaging, textiles and agriculture, and tests mechanical, chemical and biological recycling methods against each material type.
The technology has one non-negotiable constraint: it has to work inside recycling infrastructure that already exists. A sorting solution that requires every facility in Europe to rebuild its lines helps no one before 2030. Miriam Lorenzo Navarro brings that constraint, and the trial results behind it, directly into the workshop discussion.
Where to Find Us
European Bioplastics will be at booth 11 throughout the conference, 22 to 24 September. Come by if you want to talk sorting compatibility, collaboration, or membership.
Register at renewable-materials.eu. If you can’t attend in person, MoeBIOS will share the key takeaways from the session afterwards, so the question of what “recyclable” means for your packaging doesn’t have to wait until 2030 to get answered.
What to Watch For After the Session
Two outcomes matter most for anyone tracking this space. First, whether the panel converges on shared definitions for biodegradable and recyclable claims, since inconsistent labels are part of what confuses sorting systems in the first place. Second, whether any speaker shares real sorting data rather than lab conditions, since that’s the evidence packaging producers actually need before 2030.
MoeBIOS will report back on both.