Plastic products (e.g.: mulch films, controlled-release fertilizers, tree guards) are largely used in the agricultural sector in the EU. While these products offer benefits like water conservation, weed control, and increased yields, they also pose risks of soil pollution and environmental contamination.
End-of-life management of traditional agricultural plastics poses management and economic issues that may lead to improper disposal and landfilling. Other plastic products, such as turf nets and infills, are not biodegradable and difficult to recover for recycling.
To address these issues, SOUL aims to develop novel, biodegradable materials with high renewable content. The consortium partners will focus on producing new materials and developing sustainable end-of-life solutions. By addressing end-of-life management, reducing carbon footprints, decreasing and optimising inputs, and preventing soil contamination, SOUL seeks to contribute to a more sustainable and circular plastic economy.
By combining 3 building blocks and 8 technologies, SOUL will develop a complete value chain to produce 11 innovative bio-based and biodegradable in soil product solutions (BPSs) reaching a 95% of Renewable Raw Material (RRM) content while ensuring a platform able to respond to the different application needs.
WP1 – Project management and coordination
WP2 – Production of high renewable content biomaterials for biodegradable-in-soil product solutions
WP3 – Manufacturing processes for biodegradable-in-soil product solutions
WP4 – Validation of the SOUL product solutions in Demonstration Sites with the involvement of end users
WP5 – Demonstration of end-of-life scenarios and circularity of the value chains
WP6 – Assessment of the safety and LCSA of value chains under an integrated SSbD framework implementation
WP7 – Replication and Exploitation potential
WP8 – Dissemination, Communication, Training and Stakeholders engagement
Biodegradation models can help effectively design polymers and materials with safe biodegradation in open media, avoiding the microplastic dispersion and accumulation in the different natural environments. The biodegradation prediction tool developed in the SOUL project will be linked to the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) concept providing predictive information about the biodegradation in natural and open environments across the different European regions. Tracking and tracing tools will be also used to maintain control of the raw material and have a tracked carbon footprint.