CircBioCityWaste Project

CircBioCityWaste will explore cascading biorefinery concept and aim to develop innovative technologies and processes for converting urban waste streams into value-added products using circular bio-based economy approach. The project is focusing on supporting the ‘Zero Waste Cities’ approach by demonstrating the feasibility and viability of urban biowaste stream (municipal & dairy sludge, organic portion from the black bin) as a sustainable feedstock and a source of sustained revenue by creating new business opportunities through recovering and valorising municipal waste streams into high value-added plant growth biostimulant, biofertilizer and bioenergy. To effectively generate a comprehensive perspective on the opportunity of exploiting urban biowaste as a valuable resource, the project has assembled a very strong interdisciplinary team from three Irish universities and an Irish agri-tech company, and expert/representatives/advisors from industry and local authorities, balanced across discipline, expertise and gender. Leveraging partners’ knowledge, resources and relationships, CircBioCityWaste is built on prior state-of-the-art research and aims at delivering a number of outcomes including: 1) Develop technologies to produce three agrochemicals from urban biowaste, opening up new possibilities for their production and marketing on large scale in Ireland 2) Generation of clean bioenergy replacing fossil fuels 3) De-carbonisation of urban biowaste management with, amongst others, a strong component of long-term carbon sequestration. The CircBioCityWaste project will advance the Irish waste management and recycling sector diversification which will deliver significant environmental, economic and societal benefits in high-quality jobs and economic growth in the region whilst in tandem supporting circular bioeconomy development. Project Technical Details: Start Date: 31 March 2022 Duration: 4 years Call: EPA 2021 (Project Based Award) Coordinator: MTU