A new EU-funded initiative, BioBoard, is under way to develop a sustainable coating system based on the renewable raw material derived from protein-rich agrofood waste.
Composed of 14 partners from 10 European countries, the three-year BioBoard project is a response to “increasing political, legislative and consumer pressure” to reduce the dependency on fossil fuel based plastics.
With the aim of producing packaging materials from the extrusion of coating paper, paperboard and cardboard, the base material for the BioBoard coating will be innovative formulations based on proteins such as whey and residues from potato.
Figures issued by the project state that 40-50% of the 50 million tonnes of whey produced annually in Europe is discarded, while about 65,000 tonnes of dried potato juice protein and 140,000 tonnes of dried potato pulp produced annually within the EU could be available to be put to new uses.
The result of the project, BioBoard will provide: “A powerful solution to increase recycling rates of paperboard and cartonboard and also support packaging recycling policies.”
Substituting much of the PE used currently in paper laminates and aseptic package with the new BioBoard will, the project’s organisers say, enable “current challenges in the recycling of such packaging” to be overcome.
BioBoard project coordinator Dr. Elodie Bugnicourt, from the Barcelona-based IRIS company, says: “BioBoard stands in response to the current demand from producers of coated paper, paperboard and cardboard manufacturers for a bioplastic that will enable them to substitute much of the currently used synthetic coating without compromising the barrier properties of the resulting packaging laminates, and overcoming the current challenge to the recycling of such packaging.
“BioBoard is based on a holistic integrated environmental approach to increase the sustainability of materials and processes throughout their life cycle.”
With funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme, the BioBoard project was announced on International Recycling Day, 17 May 2013.
