WaysTUP! aims to demonstrate the establishment of new value chains for urban biowaste utilisation to produce higher value purpose products (i.e. biobased products, including food and feed ingredients), through a multi-stakeholder approach in line with circular economy. The project will showcase a portfolio of new ‘urban biowaste to biobased products' processes starting from different feedstocks i.e. fish and meat waste, spent coffee grounds, household source separated biowaste, used cooking oils, cellulosic waste derived from municipal wastewater and waste treatment plants and sewage sludge. Pilot demonstration will take place in several European cities i.e. Valencia (Spain), London (UK), Alicante (Spain), Prague (Czech Republic), Athens (Greece), L'Alcúdia (Spain), Terni (Italy) and Crete (Greece). The processes will result in the production of food and feed additives, flavours, insect protein, coffee oil, bioethanol, biosolvents, polyxydroxyalkanoates, ethyl lactate, long chain dicarboxylic acid, bioplastics and biochar. End-product characterisation and safety assessment will be implemented. Life Cycle Assessment of the value chains will be conducted to assess their environmental impact. WaysTUP! will develop and implement a behavioural change approach with citizens and local communities by improving the current perception of citizens and local communities on urban biowaste as a local resource; enhancing the active participation of citizens in the separate collection of urban biowaste; and improving customer acceptance of urban bio-waste derived products. New profitable business models will be developed preparing market entry of the technology solutions demonstrated as well as of the end-products resulting from them. Finally, the project will provide guidance for city managers on adopting new organisational models supporting the valorisation of urban biowaste, as well as evidence-based EU level policy recommendations for decision makers.

PERCAL will exploit Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) as feedstock to develop intermediate chemical products at high yield and low impurity level with huge industrial interest. These will be complementary to the bioethanol (current PERSEO technology), to achieve a cascade valorisation of the MSW components, i.e.: • Lactic acid (LA) to produce: 1) Eco-friendly ethyl lactate solvents by reactive distillation from lactic acid & bio-ethanol to be used in cleaning products and inks and 2) hot-melt adhesives for cardboard and other non-food applications in combination with maleic anhydride by reactive extrusion. • Succinic acid (SA) as an intermediate building blocks to production of polyols for the polyurethane industry. • Biosurfactants by chemical and/or microbiological modification of protein and lipid fraction from remaining fraction of MSW fermentation. IIn order to minimize the MSW heterogeneous composition (due to seasonal and origin variability driven by local economic, social and climate conditions) limitations as a fermentation feedstock, four main innovations will be proposed: i) New enzymatic cocktails to maximize hydrolysis of fermentable organic matter with low inhibitors production, ii) the use of high yield, specific and robust strains for each selected acid, iii) the extraction of fermentation by-products acting as inhibitors to succinic acid production via novel membrane electrolysis employing an integrated continuous fermentation coupled with simultaneous organic acid removal in comparison with SA sequential fermentation followed by its separation using an electrodialysis-based and iv) optimize simultaneous saccharification and fermentation for lactic acid production followed by a downstream separation process based on membrane electrodialysis. To maximize the yield and purity of target organic acids, continuous and single step fermentation process will be prioritized in order to allow their integration in the PERSEO plant.

Due to the rapid growth of population, municipal solid waste (MSW) has contributed significantly to the total amount of waste generated by our society. Today in Europe, each habitant generates, in average, 0.5 tonnes of MSW per year, increasing at an annual rate of 10%. Around 40-50% of it correspond to organic waste. This organic fraction mainly contains carbohydrates, proteins and lipids, which are all useful raw material that can be converted to valuable products. Its valorisation will help to solve environmental pollution but also contributes to the transition from a linear to a renewable circular economy. Digestion and composting have contributed to the reduction of the biodegradable fraction of MSW sent to landfill. The low economical value of compost and biogas is limiting the sustainable implementation of separate sourcing systems since increasing citizen environmental (waste) taxes is then need to tackle important logistic costs. New biobased products can help to improve waste treatment environmental and socio-economical sustainability. The aim of URBIOFIN project is to demonstrate the techno-economic and environmental viability of the conversion at semi-industrial scale (10 T/d) of the organic fraction of MSW (OFMSW) into: Chemical building blocks (bioethanol, volatile fatty acids, biogas), biopolymers (polyhydroyalkanoate and biocomposites) or additives (microalgae hydrolisated for biofertilisers). By using the biorefinery concept applied to MSW (urban biorefinery), URBIOFIN will exploit the OFMSW as feedstock to produce different valuable marketable products for different markets: agriculture, cosmetics. URBIOFIN will offer a new feasible and more sustainable scenario alternative to the current treatment of the OFMSW.