SUSTAINEXT is led by Natac and brings together 21 partners from Europe and Spain, 7 of them from the Extremadura region. The project will start in June 2023 and will last four and a half years. In summary, the technological objective of the project is to implement on an industrial scale a digital, dynamic, versatile, disruptive and multi-product biorefinery, with a processing capacity of 20,000 tonnes per year and following a NetZero Carbon strategy. This first-of-its-kind flagship will transform the plant-based ingredients sector, while showcasing and deploying a first-of its kind model likely to be replicable by the whole European bio-based industry. SUSTAINEXT aims to transform Natac's current production plant, located in Hervás in the north of Extremadura, into the most modern, digital, innovative and sustainable plant extracts factory in the world, placing the company and the region at the forefront of the sector at a global level. The model is based in the integration of the whole supply chain - from feedstock to end users - applying a disruptive circular model based on a smart dynamic analytical biorefinery (DYANA): a smart dynamic biorefining process for the cascade valorisation of feedstocks which is optimized batch-wise according to the initial composition of the feedstock to deliver maximum value with minimum environmental impact and ensure resource efficiency. DYANA will allow to achieve the complete valorisation of the processed feedstock with a zero-waste and zero-emissions ambition. SUSTAINEXT will be industrially deployed with six sustainably and locally sourced European feedstocks. Three medicinal and aromatic crops (rosemary, camomile, and lemon verbena) will be cultivated in Extremadura in disused tobacco fields as an alternative towards healthier crops, and also between solar panels (agrivoltaics) enhancing soil use. Three agro-industrial side streams (olive, artichoke/cardoon, and pomegranate) will showcase how biomass upcycling represents an opportunity to give a new life to certain underexploited bio-based feedstocks. SUSTAINEXT flagship will deliver 46 plant-based healthy extracts and functional ingredients out of which 13 are totally new on the market and 12 are newly produced in Europe. It will generate a revenue of 271 M€, will create more than 5,000 new green jobs (direct and indirect) and will have a decisive socioeconomic impact in Extremadura.

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.

Waste4Soil envisions the development of 10 technological and methodological solutions for recycling food processing residues from the food industry into local, biobased circular soil improvers for improved soil health. A user-driven standardised Evaluation Framework will support stakeholders from the food value chain, including waste managers, to assess their status towards food processing residues circularity and take action for recycling suitable waste streams into beneficial soil improvers. To ensure co-innovation and collaborative research, Waste4Soil will setup 7 Soil Health Living Labs across Europe, in Greece, Finland, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia, to study the valorisation of 8 types of food processing residues (i.e., meat, fish, dairy, cereals, olive oil, beverages (wine), fruits and vegetables, and processed food). The project focuses on assessing and improving the effectiveness of existing routes of food waste management to soil improver components, formulation and application methods by focusing on: 1) Anaerobic digestion residues by employing novel nutrient separation including Selective Electrodialysis, bio-electrochemical and membrane systems 2) Novel efficient Biochar production from food processing wastes and digestates 3) BioPhosphate processing 4) Effective composting process of solid residues 5) Protein hydrolysates acting as soil improvers and AD-Microalgae combined processes for soil biostimulants and 6) An enabling management platform applied in all living labs, with a growing database of data analytics, route optimisation applications, soil health evaluations and application recipe’s, commercial aspects, and the capacity to use IoT devices in logistics. The 27 partners and 1 associated partner supporting this project proposal are forming a transdisciplinary partnership accross 10 European countries.