Knowledge integration for efficient decicion-making: a case study from fish-canning wastewater valorization

The recovery of resources from food industries wastewater and further transformation into high performance biodegradable plastics is an ambitious objective which fulfils the objectives of circular economy and SDGs 6 and 14: i) a potentially harmful water pollutant if discharged is converted instead into an added-value product; ii) ensuring biodegradability in marine conditions, the plastic pollution is greatly minimised. In the framework of H2020 project USABLE-PACKAGING (www.usable-packaging.eu), we are carrying out a comprehensive analysis of a selection of representative value chains, from the industrial effluent to the final bioplastic product and potential by-products to ensure its economic and environmental sustainability. In particular, we are integrating knowledge from different sources, namely from deliberately designed experiments, mathematical models and literature reviews, for the holistic assessment of the environmental performance of several scenarios, with different wastewater characteristics (i.e. substrate) and a diverse range of bioplastic applications (i.e. final product).