Roadshow stopover Berlin: Key take away messages

Thanks to Berlin for hosting our first stopover on 1 July 2026. 

The roadshow opening traced back to a 2023 Horizon Europe call on the “Recycling of bio-based plastics, improving sorting and recycled content (upcycling)”, which, in 2024, funded three sibling projects: ReBioCycle, MoeBIOS and PROSPER. The three projects have developed complementary approaches to scale up technologies for recycling biobased and biodegradable plastics, each with novel features. 

This event brought together complementary perspectives that, together, paint an encouraging picture of where these projects stand and where they are headed. 

Here is a short summary of the discussion topics with the participants.

Materials already built for circularity 

A growing range of biobased materials is proving genuinely compatible with today’s recycling infrastructure. Drop-in bioplastics (e.g. bio-PE, bio-PET) slot directly into existing streams, while non-drop-in bioplastics (PLA, PEF, PBS, PBAT) bring valuable new functionalities and are steadily finding their own dedicated pathways. Real-world examples are already on shelves: for instance, a mono-material bio-PE bottle fully compatible with existing PE recycling, and a PEF beverage bottle that integrates smoothly into PET recycling. These cases speak directly to what ReBioCycle and MoeBIOS are working to scale up: identifying which biobased and biodegradable polymers can be recycled in existing or improved streams and achieve a high yield after recycling. 

A clear, expanding toolkit of recycling routes 

There is real momentum behind closing the loop on bioplastics. While only 6.9% of materials worldwide are currently recycled, compared with a theoretical recyclability ceiling of 25%, the gap is largely about cost and infrastructure rather than technical feasibility, which means it is very much solvable. A well-defined set of routes already exists and maps clearly onto different polymers: mechanical and chemical recycling for PLA; mechanical and biological routes for PHA; mechanical and enzymatic recycling for PBAT; and mechanical and chemical recycling for Bio-PE(T). With sorting, recycling methods, scaling and implementation identified as the shared next milestones, ReBioCycle and MoeBIOS are well positioned to convert this technical groundwork into real-world capacity. 

Regulatory tailwind through the PPWR 

The PPWR gives the sector a concrete timeline to build toward: recyclability by design (Art. 6), minimum recycled content (Art. 7), compostability (Art. 9) and a dedicated review of biobased raw materials (Art. 8), alongside extended producer responsibility duties from August 2026. Rather than a constraint, this creates a clear compliance horizon, 2028 recyclability-by-design and 2027 recycled-content milestones, that gives ReBioCycle and MoeBIOS a strong, well-defined market to deliver solutions into. 

Presentations

https://zenodo.org/records/21107285

Thanks to

Enterprise Europe Network node in Berlin, and specifically Robert Lenk for welcoming us!

Thanks to all the speakers: Manuel Bruch (UCD, ReBioCycle), Chiara Bearzotti (EUBP, MoeBIOS and ReBioCycle), Patrick Zimmermann (FKUR), Christoph Petri (DIHK).