The use of plastic products has increased significantly due to their versatility, ease of manufacture, and affordability. However, the excessive production and disposal of plastics have led to environmental concerns. Packaging and construction are the largest end-use markets for plastics in the EU. Agriculture is another major user, with plastic products like mulching films, controlled-release fertilizers, and tree guards being widely used. While these products offer benefits like water conservation, weed control, and increased yields, they also pose risks of soil pollution and environmental contamination. The majority of agricultural plastics are not collected or recycled, leading to improper disposal and landfilling. Other plastic products, such as turf nets and infills, are not biodegradable and difficult to recover for recycling. To address these issues, SOUL aims to develop novel, biodegradable materials with high renewable content. The consortium partners will focus on producing new materials, transforming existing plastic products, and developing sustainable end-of-life solutions. By addressing waste management, reducing carbon footprints, and preventing soil contamination, SOUL seeks to contribute to a more sustainable and circular plastic economy. SOUL will deploy at TRL8, with a circular bioeconomy and multi-actor approach, a complete value chain to produce 11 innovative bio-based and biodegradable in soil product solutions meeting high market demand, by the combination of 3 building blocks and 8 technologies, reaching solutions with a 95% of Renewable Raw Materials while ensuring a platform able to respond to the different application needs.

BIZENTE project presents an innovative solution to resolve the end-of-life of thermoset composites based on the development of a new technology focused on a controlled enzymatic biodegradation. BIZENTE technology will contribute to decrease the amount of non-biodegradable polymers currently discharged to the environment or sent to landfill and incineration in at least a 40%. The solution will imply opening a biocatalytic process to new type of feedstock (3 thermoset resins and composites) not previously approached in the plastics value chain. BIZENTE will determine directed enzyme evolution strategies to improve ligninolytic oxidoreductases which have been selected as the most suited biocatalysts to degrade the three types of thermoset composites addressed in the project (epoxy, polyester and vinylester). Once this new technology has been optimised and scaled-up to a pilot environment, the biodegradation products will be valorised into new building blocks for the chemical industry. BIZENTE project will directly contribute to achieve SIRA’s in KPI1, KPI2 and KPI8. BIZENTE consortium involves 10 partners: 3 RTD (Aitiip, UCA and TuDelft), 5 SME (EvoEnzyme, BSP, SP, PLATA and ECRT), and 2 Large Companies (ACCIONA and AED), accounting to 1 BIC full member (BIOPHERE) and 3 associated (AITIIP, UCA, TUDELFT). It involves partners from 5 EU countries (ES, NL, FR, IT, DK). The 48-months proposed will comprise a total estimated budget of 3,182,571 €; being the 21,2% covered by consortium own contribution (in-kinds) and adding 223,764.5 € in additional activities during the project implementation and 2,350,000 € envisaged to upgrade TRL after the end of the project. Benefits will be significant in terms of EU growth (13,1%) and increasing jobs (16 direct, 1000 indirect) by promoting at least 2 new sector interconnections in the new created “enzymatic circular VC for composite materials”.

Rapid transition toward the use of renewable, energy-efficient and recyclable resource is needed in industrial biotechnology to achieve sustainable production of chemicals. However, enzyme based biocatalytic processes still mostly rely on fossil-sourced or carbon rich reactants. Efficient, scalable, selective and robust catalysts are needed to deploy H2 as a clean, circular and renewable reactant in industrial biotechnology. Our recent breakthrough in making robust and scalable hydrogenases, Nature's highly active catalyst for H2 oxidation and H2 production, opens the possibility to meet the industrial requirements in terms of i) compatibility with biocatalysis, ii) circular chemistry, and iii) economic and technical competitiveness over fossil-sourced reactants. The overarching aim of CirculH2 is to demonstrate the successful development of one or more highly robust and scalable hydrogenases for use of H2 that selectively drives biotransformations of bio-based materials to specialty and commodity chemicals in an industrial environment (TRL6). Modelling of the reaction processes and lifecycle assessment will deliver a full quantitative evaluation of the performances and applicability of the hydrogenase-biotransformation systems. This will provide convincing evidence for the adoption in industry. CirculH2 will deliver a scalable and robust H2-driven biotechnology compatible with the existing infrastructure that will advance European competitiveness in the sustainable and circular production of chemicals. It will minimize energy usage by having negligible resource losses and minimal downstream processing due to its highly selective hydrogenase catalysts. The CirculH2 technology aims at replacing the heavily used legacy methods of chemical production and enable decarbonization of industrial biotechnology.

Europe needs a sustainable chemical industry which will only be realized by new breakthrough technologies. Industrial biotechnology is established in chemical manufacturing, offering more efficient, more specific, safer and less energy demanding production, but is held back by the limited number of enzyme classes in industrial use. This project opens up an important new enzyme class of tungsten-containing enzymes (W-enzymes) which catalyse amazing chemical reactions involving challenging low redox potential reduction reactions, but are currently impossible to obtain economically and on scale to match industrial needs. We need to produce W-enzymes using an industrial workhorse micro-organism such as E. coli. Yet, we discovered that W-cofactor biosynthesis is the bottleneck preventing successful production of W-enzymes in E. coli. We can solve this challenge by using cutting-edge computational enzyme design approaches we recently developed, to create a completely new W-cofactor biosynthesis pathway for E. coli. The W-BioCat strains developed in this project will enable expression of new W-enzymes from genetic databases, and facilitate production of new engineered W-enzymes. The catalytic potential of these new W-enzymes will be established and implemented in new processes. Exciting new reaction scope in biocatalytic CO2 reduction to valuable chemicals and Birch reduction of aromatic compounds will be explored, alongside the already-established and broadly applicable carboxylic acid reductions. W-BioCat will be the breakthrough to make W-enzymes accessible for industry. As a proof of concept, a hydrogen-driven process to convert plant-derived oleic acid to the emollient ester oleyl oleate will be created. Oleyl oleate is used in many cosmetic products used daily by millions of people. This process will be demonstrated in multi-gram yield in scalable, industrially-relevant hydrogenation reactors, together with market research to address a pathway to commercialisation.

Global healthcare associated with chronic non-healing wounds can be considered a main public health problem as affects up to 2% of the world population. A novel approach is needed mainly to support the quality of life of the people suffering from this silent epidemic and additionally, alleviate the impact in costs and resources for the healthcare system. Up to date, no smart bandages have made it to the real market and research state is still going on for a reliable and sensitive inspection method. The main goal of WOUNDSENS project is to lead the development of a novel generation of wearable biosensors with a synergy of technological breakthroughs in transversal fields of knowledge. Sensor elements, for the first time, will directly become a compatible part of the wound dressing material itself resulting in enhanced wearing comfort and operability. Accordingly, they will be integratable into manufacturers' existing standard processes (suturing, embroidery, roll-to-roll). Our proposal presents a parading shift in smart wound dressings constructed on novel hollow fibers with radial bio-signaling based on engineered novel enzymes. WOUNDSENS presents a leading-edge new technology with the design and development of innovative electrochemical materials with step forward advances in CONDUCTIVE MATERIAL, the development of electrospun neofibers and processes with leading edge methodologies on ELECTROSPINNING and the ENZYME ENGINEERING of a new family of detection biocatalysts (resurrected and extant enzymes) to secure a sensitive and reliable signal. WOUNDSENS proposal accepts the challenge of pushing forward the new technological platform to design a new concept in continuous wound control and monitoring improving the life of millions of people.