EU-backed project turns food waste into bio-based rubber

A €3.6 million European research initiative is transforming discarded bread and potatoes into synthetic rubber, aiming to slash the industry’s carbon footprint. The four-year RUBBIO project, launched in May 2026 and running through April 2030, is coordinated by Spain’s Fundacion AITIIP and involves 11 academic institutes, associations and companies across Europe and the UK. The consortium will convert starch-rich food waste—primarily bread and potatoes—into key chemical intermediates via microbial fermentation, targeting the production of polybutadiene (PB), styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) and nitrile-butadiene rubber (NBR). The project’s stated goals include over 95% conversion efficiency of starch feedstock into fermentable syrup, with an expected selling price of €400–600 per tonne. It also aims to cut emissions from bio-based butanediol production by 41% compared with fossil-based methods, or by 81–89% when excluding biogenic emissions. For propionic acid, RUBBIO targets a carbon footprint below 2kg of CO2 and a 35% cost reduction, bringing production costs closer to the petrochemical benchmark of €0.85/kg. The consortium plans to secure more than 1,500 tonnes of bread and potato waste weekly as industrial feedstock, establishing three new value chains based on food waste. The project is funded under the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU), an EU partnership supporting sustainable, circular bio-based industries.