Bioeconomy is gaining in importance: project aims to create solutions for cross-sector certification

ioeconomy is an economic concept. The core of the idea is the use of biological resources and biotechnological processes for the production of food, energy, materials and chemicals. This includes the sustainable use of biomass to produce environmentally friendly and renewable products or services. A well-known and already widespread example is biogas plants that use agricultural waste to generate energy. Basically, the bioeconomy aims to make economic growth compatible with environmental sustainability.

Implementation in an industrial test environment is often lacking

Many new, innovative and promising processes and ideas have already been generated in recent years. So far, however, many of them have not gone beyond laboratory scale. The bioeconomic developments from the research centers still too rarely find their way into industrial production. Often there is still a lack of implementation in an industrial test environment to enable scaling to industrial production and to create a willingness to invest.

BMWK supports the project

A new network with over 20 players from various sample regions of the industrial bioeconomy is now set to change this. In the nationwide TransBIB funding project, these example regions of the industrial bioeconomy are being networked and are thus pooling expertise in research, industry and politics in order to make scalable bioeconomy technologies accessible to industry “bottom-up” more quickly. TransBIB forms the national framework for accelerating the bioeconomy and actively promotes cooperation with the state ministries responsible for the bioeconomy, including the Federal Government’s Bioeconomy Council and the Industrial Bioeconomy Dialogue Platform. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) with 5.6 million euros. The SKZ is also heavily involved in this network. Several divisions of the Würzburg institute are active in the network.

Support for companies in various sectors

For the bioeconomy to really work in the sense of a circular economy, cross-sector and even cross-industry thinking is required. For this reason, the network chooses a comprehensive approach and aims to support companies from various sectors such as wood, chemicals, food and many more. The economic aspect in particular should also be thought through to the end in TransBIB. A large part of the project therefore deals with the high economic significance of product certificates.

Customers often unsettled by green-washing incidents

It is often difficult for small and medium-sized companies in particular to place more sustainable products on the market. On the one hand, the higher sustainability of a product is not immediately apparent to the buyer, and on the other hand, end customers in particular are unsettled by many green-washing incidents. The solution is neutral certification systems that confirm the environmentally friendly use of resources and production methods. "Unfortunately, there is a veritable jungle of certification systems. It is almost impossible for traditional SMEs to keep track of this. What’s more, certification is relatively extensive and complex. In general, communicating sustainable product characteristics to the customer involves a great deal of effort and is therefore hardly used by smaller companies in particular, or only if there is direct pressure from customers or consumers,” explains Sophia Botsch, Scientist in the Sustainability and Circular Economy department at SKZ.

Consumers need “certainty about the sustainability of products”

This is precisely where the project involving the SKZ’s Sustainability department comes in, in order to simplify the certification of bio-based products. TransBIB aims to develop an information platform that shows affected companies the way to the appropriate certification. "An additional challenge here is the cross-industry material flows, which are often covered by completely different certifications. These many interfaces need to be regulated in order to ultimately provide companies with useful, cost-effective and simple evidence and thus give consumers certainty about the sustainability of products,” says Botsch.

Online workshop series covers various topics

In order to make progress here, the SKZ is bringing together the various stakeholders across all sectors. This involves the provider side (certification systems), the monitoring players (auditors, inspectors), users of the certificates (processing SMEs in the B2B and B2C sectors, primary producers, companies from the circular economy) and social representatives (e.g. NABU with its bioeconomy factors). A series of free workshops will cover various topics. In order to optimally address the concerns of all parties involved, the SKZ is organizing the first online workshop on the topic of “Certification of bio-based products” on Thursday, 26 September 2024, from 1 to 3 pm.

More information on the TransBIB project