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Green Chemistry wins H2020 Funding

Posted on 20 January 2017

The Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence (GCCE) has been awarded three-year Horizon 2020 funding as part of a multidisciplinary and multi-actor collaborative Research and Innovation Action (RIA) coordinated by Unitelma Sapienza University, Italy.

The project STAR-ProBio aims to promote a more efficient and harmonized policy regulation framework, needed to promote the market-pull of bio-based products within the context on a sustainable 21^st Century. This will be achieved by developing a fit-for-purpose modular sustainability scheme, linked to standards, labels and certification opportunities.

Professor James Clark, Dr Avtar Matharu and Ms Louise Summerton from the GCCE will lead on the development of suitable thresholds for indicators of environmental sustainability that allow for comparisons between bio-based products and their alternatives. Life cycle analysis will be used to evaluate the manufacturing processes used to make bio-based products, and identify product design choices to minimise waste and environmental impact. Environmental sustainability criteria will be combined with social and economic indicators of sustainability for a thorough, harmonised scheme for all types bio-based products.

Dr Avtar Matharu, Deputy Director of the GCCE, said: “This project is a reflection of our continued research on establishing much-needed biobased standards. Global society needs to be better informed when it comes to ‘biobased’ especially as more biobased products and alternatives appear in the marketplace. 

“Providing measurable, evidence-based standards against a set of sustainability criteria is an exciting challenge and a huge step forward in our understanding."