EU-backed project targets food waste for bio-based rubber

Brussels – A four-year European research project is seeking to develop bio-based rubber materials from food-industry waste, including discarded bread and potatoes.

The RUBBIO project, which began in May 2026 and runs through April 2030, will involve 11 European and UK-based academic institutes, associations and companies*, according to the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU)**.

As part of the programme, the teams will use starch-rich food waste as a feedstock for microbial fermentation and the production of key chemical intermediates, monomers and synthetic rubber.

Coordinated by Zaragoza, Spain-based Fundacion AITIIP, the project aims to produce 2,3-butanediol and propionic acid intermediates, followed by 1,3-butadiene, acrylonitrile and styrene monomers and ultimately polybutadiene (PB), styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) and nitrile-butadiene rubber (NBR).

According to its projects page, CBE JU is contributing €3.6 million to the partnership which will combine biomanufacturing and chemical engineering approaches to develop “sustainable, scalable, and high-performance rubber materials through the synthesis of key intermediates.”

The project targets more than 95% conversion efficiency of starch feedstock into fermentable syrup, with an expected selling price of €400–600 per tonne.

It also aims to reduce emissions from bio-based butanediol production by 41% compared with fossil-based production, or by 82–89% when biogenic emissions are excluded.

For propionic acid, RUBBIO targets a carbon footprint of less than 2kg of CO2 and a production-cost reduction of around 35%, bringing the cost towards the petrochemical benchmark of €0.85/kg.

The consortium aims to secure more than 1,500 tonnes of bread and potato waste per week as an industrial feedstock, with the project expected to establish three new value chains based on food waste.

*Project participants include Project participants: Fundacion Tekniker (Spain); Asociacion para la Promocion, Investigacion, Desarrollo e Innovacion Tecnologica de la Industria del Calzado y Conexas de La Rioja (Spain); Artigo SpA (Italy); Siec Badawcza Lukasiewicz – Instytut Chemii Surowców Odnawialnych (Poland); C-Source Renewables (UK); Centrum Transferu Technologii – Innovations Sp. zoo (Poland); Cranfield University (UK); Celignis Ltd (Ireland); Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium); Nuevas Tecnologías para el Desarrollo de Packaging y Productos Agroalimentarios con Componente Plástica SL (Spain); and The University of Edinburgh (UK).

**CBE JU is a European Union partnership that funds research and innovation projects aimed at developing sustainable, circular bio-based industries in Europe.