Recycling plastic and developing hybrid living materials by capturing greenhouse gases to produce value-added products - REPLACER

Project summary

Rationale: Climate change, plastic pollution, and food insecurity are existential threats and pose tremendous challenges to Europe and the world. Finding sustainable solutions are challenging. Objectives: The REPLACER project addresses these challenges by combining the advantages of the living and non-living worlds to develop hybrid living materials (HLMs) and enable sustainable production of feed proteins. Potential applications: Key applications include a new carbon capture and utilization (CCU) concept, HLM-based bioreactor prototypes from recycled PET, and microbial proteins produced from greenhouse gases (GHGs) as a source of animal feed. Impact and potential benefits: The commercialisation of the concept will contribute: a) capturing GHGs and supporting EU's GHG emission reduction targets, b) recycling plastic and supporting the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan, c) producing microbial proteins and reducing EU’s dependency on soy protein import.