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INGREEN is an EU-funded project that will develop functional innovative ingredients from paper and agro-food side streams through biotechnological processes for food, feed, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, cosmetics and biodegradable packaging.
This 3,5-year project will develop new chemicals, new materials, and new consumer products from whey, wheat and rye brans, and paper milling wastewater.
INGREEN will demonstrate in real operational environments sustainable and efficient tailor-made biotechnologies and eco-friendly approaches to produce safe and/or health promoting microbial biomasses and biochemicals, as well as functional ingredients of interest for several industrial sectors.
Innovative bio-based prototypes will be developed and where possible packaged in biodegradable solutions tailored for food, feed, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic needs.
INGREEN is a partnership between a number of organisations from the agricultural, food and industrial sectors. The direct involvement of the eight SMEs, four large industries and four academic partners well-experienced in knowledge transfer are key to devise scale up strategies and work plans needed to speed up the successful market introduction of the innovative bio-based processes and final products.
Project technical details:
Start date: 1 June 2019
Duration: 3,5 years
Call: H2020-BBI-JTI-2018
Coordinator: INEUVO Ltd
Even though our natural resources are depleting, the demand for high-quality ingredients and products continues to grow. Therefore, an important part of achieving zero waste is the optimisation of the use of all materials in production processes. INGREEN will focus on finding new ways to use by-products and side streams from the production processes of very common products, namely paper, bread and cheese. Biotechnology will be developed to capture these potential valuable sources of bio-based compounds suitable for exploitation.
As the project develops products and production processes capable of valorising three currently underutilized types of wastes and by-products, it will also provide a number of societal and environmental benefits, including:
Europe is facing the imperative need to address the huge amount of waste generated by agriculture and the food processing industry. Unfortunately, these streams are often not properly managed from both an environmental and economic perspective. In fact, the FP7 project FUSIONS reported that the EU primary production and the food processing sectors accounted for 9.1 and 17 million tons of waste respectively in 2012, while paper plants generate 80M3 of wastewater for each ton of pulp produced.
Residual biomass and side streams as well as by-products that originate from paper mill and agro-food industries, including the dairy and the wheat, barley, oat and rye milling, have a high organic matter and are potential sources of functional bio-based compounds and bioactive ingredients. Since these compounds are potentially suitable for variety of applications, their recovery, characterization, and reuse would turn that what is considered waste into valuable products. This in turn would reduce waste disposal and improve the paper and agro-food industrial eco-sustainability. Paper mill, dairy and wheat and rye milling side streams and by-products may also be valuable resources to produce safe microbial starters and functional adjuncts with many applications in food and feed sectors.
INGREEN aims to capture these potential valuable sources of unexploited bio-based compounds.
