A research consortium is developing a system for turning dairy waste into plastics

A research consortium is developing a system for turning dairy waste into plastics

A European Union-funded research consortium is developing an industrial system for producing biodegradable plastics from waste dairy products. The E1.6m Wheypol project will use whey as the raw material to synthesise polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) – biodegradable polyesters that could replace conventional packaging plastics. Around 30% of the 50 million tonnes of whey produced in Europe annually is currently discarded.

The project will investigate how techniques such as melt blow extrusion and injection moulding could be used to convert the polyesters into packaging films and containers.

Consortium members include Italy’s Idroplast, Austria’s BDI Anlagebau, Poland’s Centre of Polymer Chemistry and the Polymer Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. The project co-ordinator is Graz University of Technology in Austria.