The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of May 10th, 2018

#5 Dairy waste finds new life as useful chemicals and plastics

In Ireland, a project dedicated to finding value-added uses for dairy waste has received €22 million ($26.6 million) in funding from the European Commission’s Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU).

The project’s members, including leader Glanbia, will contribute another €8 million. The scope of the work includes a biorefinery at Lisheen, Co Tipperary to produce biobased products,  including biodegradable plastics. Specifically, the work will convert dairy waste whey permeate and delactosed whey permeate to lactic acid.

In addition to Glanbia Ireland, AgriChemWhey participants include University College Dublin; AMBER, School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin; Commercial Mushroom Producers Cooperative Society Ltd (CMP), Ireland; PNO Consultants Limited, UK; GIG Karasek GmbH, Austria; Tipperary County Council, Ireland; Teagasc; Pole Greenwin, Belgium; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; EW Biotech GmbH, Germany.