BIOVEGE got vegetable waste in containers and Superfoods

The project will draw from fruit and vegetable waste such as cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumber, zucchini or peppers bioplastics with new properties for producing sustainable packaging as well as bioactive compounds and food preservatives.

Six companies and four technology centers have launched the project BIOVEGE. Subsidized by CDTI through Innterconecta program and supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the project aims to provide an outlet for the huge amounts of fruit and vegetable waste generated by the garden of Andalusia in the form of products with high added value and sustainable packaging with improved properties and additives or preservatives for the preparation of healthy foods.

Annually, about 500,000 tonnes in Andalusia horticultural products which are not in demand in the form of compost, biogas or feed, so that their fate is mainly the landfill proceed. To give a second life to these wastes in the form of products of high added value, the project in which AIMPLAS participates as technical coordinator proposes two ways of recovery: extraction of food compounds for food preservatives and bioactive ingredients, and hydrolyzing waste for alcohols from its sugars to improve existing bioplastics for use as packaging of horticultural products themselves.

Five other companies as Torres Morente, Domca, Neol, ECOPLAS and Morera and Vallejo, as well as AIMPLAS and three other research centers led by Alhóndiga The Union also participate in the project as Tecnalia, CIDAF Cajamar Foundation and Las Palmillas are. Each of the partners will contribute their knowledge in a project phase: Since the recovery of waste to the development and validation of new packaging and bioactive ingredients.

Edible coatings and Superfoods

In the case of preservatives and ingredients, the project provides a competitive advantage over products currently on the market in terms of cost. Bioactive ingredients have a high price, but their production from waste without market value would solve this problem. The BIOVEGE project foresees the development of natural preservatives in the form of edible coatings and extraction of bioactive ingredients in the form of hydrophobic and lipophilic emulsions in microcapsules that allow the body to assimilate more easily.

Improved sustainable packaging for fruit and vegetable

Moreover, BIOVEGE allows new fatty alcohols from sugar containing food waste such as cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumber, bell pepper and zucchini. With them is expected to get new degrees of plasticized biopolyesters which to make meshes and films for shrink packaging for preservation and packaging of horticultural products themselves, in line with circular economy policies of the European Union.

Source: AIMPLAS