Biowaste refers to biodegradable kitchen waste (fruit and vegetables scraps), food waste (that was edible as such) but also garden and park waste. 

This type of “waste’ however, should rather be seen as a resource: through a treatment process, biowaste can be turned into valuable biobased products such as bioethanol or bioplastic: this the bioeconomy. 

Biowaste is estimated to represent 40% of the municipal solid waste in Europe. Approximately 75% of this material is landfilled, representing about 1.3 billion of global food waste annually, while only 25 % is recycled into products – mainly compost and biogas. This represents a huge loss at the level of the raw material, but has also repercussions in terms of economic losses, nutritional losses and environmental impacts. This fact is mostly related to the complexity, heterogeneity and variability of the urban biowaste as well as to the level of purity needed from this raw material.

You are part of the bioeconomy loop! You make sure that bysorting your biowaste, it can be turned into valuable products and the bioeconomy can succeed.

                                             Thank you! Without you, the loop is broken: your participation is crucial!

                                                                                  How can you join the loop?

                                                                                   Easy… sort your biowaste!

Most cities have a separate collection scheme forbiowaste that ensure that the biowaste collected to be treated and transformed into valuable products.

Another valuable way you can contribute is to buy material made from biowaste: biobased products! Unfortunately, the bioeconomy is not mainstream enough to produce large quantities of biobased product, therefore you might have difficulties finding products. At the moment, such product are rather available for professionals and industries, but once more people will take part in the loop, more products will be available!

The WaysTUP! project is active in several countries (see “Pilot Cases” in the menu bar) but you can personally take part in it if you live in Athens, Barcelona or Valencia.

In these cities, a special programme is in place to engage citizens and businesses just like you!

Do you want to help us understand how to better engage with citizens to improve the bioeconomy?

Click here to take part in our survey!

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