Impact

P4SB will develop essential waste valorisation strategies which can contribute to the objective of raising current recycling rates of PET from 30 to 50% and of PU from >5 to 70%, as targeted by the EU in 2020. 

The European Commission recognises the challenges and opportunities of moving towards a sustainable society. It is seeking to transition Europe away from fossil based resources and to increase reusing of materials and recycling of waste, as indicated in the Horizon 2020 Focus Area “Waste” and Societal Challenges 3 and 5 concerning the bio-economy and resource efficiency. The P4SB-project is a technological response to these challenges. P4SB will contribute novel Synthetic Biology technologies (exploited by BCM and PROTEUS) to the important EU plastic waste recycling market, thereby moving Synthetic Biology from academia into large scale application (exploited by BIOPLASTECH and SOPREMA). While this central goal of the project is long term, other project impacts will be realised in short and medium terms, during the four years envisaged for P4SB.