Plastic bottles made from orange peel

In an article published on August 8, 2017 by news provider Plastics News Europe, reporter Richard Higgs informed about a project entitled MIPLASCOE, aiming to transform a large portion of Spain’s orange peel waste into bioplastic juice bottles and extruded profiles.

The project is a collaboration between Spanish companies J. Garcia Carrion (wine and juice producer), Agrocode (bioscience firm), Canagrosa (research laboratory), Plastipak (plastic bottle moulder), Lisanplast (profile extruder), and Azvi (civil and rail engineering), as well as the University of Seville, the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and AIMPLAS, Spain’s plastics technology institute.

Spain is Europe’s leading producer of orange and other fruit juices. The waste from this industry “currently undergoes energy intensive processing into animal feed pellets or is consigned to landfill,” Higgs explained. In the scope of MIPLASCOE, different monomers will be extracted from the citrus waste material by microbial fermentation and bio-polyester synthesis, with the ultimate goal ”to create value added products from the waste.” 

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