BioLaMer has won the 10th edition of the “TRAIAN VUIA” International Show of Inventions and Innovations that took place between June 13-15, 2024 at the Administrative Palace of the Timis County Council, Timisoara, Romania.
The event was organized by the “King Mihai” University of Life Sciences from Timișoara in partnership with the Society of Inventors from Banat, the Timiș County Council and QUB TV.
The participation and winning this competition has helped BioLaMer to communicate the project and its impacts to another country/region in Europe. The innovative project was presented by the team members of AMBER Centre, Trinity College Dublin and SocLineTech Solutions & Services through the poster titled “The BioLaMer route to address food waste and petrochemical plastic challenges“.
Principle topics covered during the event include;
Food waste: A Growing crisis
Food waste has become a major global issue, with alarming statistics underlining the consequences. According to the United Nations, approximately one-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted. When food waste ends up in landfills, it decomposes and produces methane – a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential more than 25 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. This contributes significantly to the climate change.
Petrochemical plastics: An Environmental Catastrophe
Conventional plastic materials, primarily derived from petrochemicals, are another major environmental issue that needs to be immediately addressed. These traditional plastics are produced through a linear economy model, where products are manufactured, used once and discarded, which in turn leads to substantial environmental damage. When plastics are improperly disposed of, they contribute to land and air pollution, severely affect marine life and eventually entering into the human food chain as microplastics, raising serious health concerns.
BioLaMer Solution through an Innovative Approach:
In response to these above-mentioned challenges, EIC Pathfinder Open funded project; BioLaMer will demonstrate a novel proof of principle biorefinery by establishing food-eating black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) as a high-impact feedstock for the production of two biopolymers, namely, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) and chitosan, and value-added bioplastics from them.
This larvae route offers the following advantages,
- Larvae are renewable resources and are inexpensive.
- It provides less complexity once the process is optimised, simplifying the production process of PHAs.
- By using food to cultivate larvae helps in reducing the amount of food waste sent to landfills, mitigating FW problems.
- Reduces the dependence on crop-based feedstocks.
- It does not disturb the biodiversity.
- Can avoid/reduce significant pre-treatment costs associated with other waste-streams to produce the platform chemicals used for PHA production.
