From the creation of new flavours and aromas from waste by-products to maximising water use, Spanish companies are rising to the challenge to deliver on the EU\u2019s circular economy plan in a number of innovative ways. EURACTIV\u2019s partner EFEAGRO reports.<\/p>\n
Research investigating how best to maximise the life cycle of products, as part of the European Commission\u2019s circular economy plan, has yielded some promising results.<\/p>\n
In Spain, sources from the Federation of Food and Beverage Industries (FIAB) told EFEAGRO that \u201ca lot of investment is being made to take advantage of by-products from the food industry to be used as raw material for other industrial processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
This type of innovation includes examples such as obtaining biogas from agri-food waste or industrial wastewater, as well as looking for ways to minimise raw material consumption or improve the management of waste.<\/p>\n
From wine to fine dining<\/p>\n
Matarromera Wineries has worked for more than a decade on preserving and promoting \u201corujos\u201d, products that, after pressing for wine, are rich in polyphenols, compounds with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties.<\/p>\n
Matarromera \u2018s head of environment, Mar\u00eda Sevillano, says they can then use the leftover products both in cosmetics and as a high-quality ingredient.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe obtain a powdered extract that we have integrated into our cosmetics and use it as a \u2018haute cuisine\u2019 type of ingredient,\u201d since it can be incorporated into dishes to \u201creduce the salt content and enhance certain flavours,\u201d Sevillano stressed.<\/p>\n
In its circular economy strategy, Matarromera is also interested in using the extract as a fungicide in vineyards and reusing pruning branches as fuel in boilers.<\/p>\n
Using greener packaging and reducing both energy dependency and carbon footprint are also among the goals to achieve greater sustainability, in line with the new principles of the post-2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Sevillano explained.<\/p>\n
Calidad Pascual is another Spanish agri-food company that is investigating ways to reuse waste products from their own factories.<\/p>\n
Calidad Pascual\u2019s director of the \u2018People, Quality and Ethical Management, Responsible and Excellent\u2019 unit, Joseba Arano, explained that the company has reduced the consumption of resources by optimising production and packaging processes, reusing the materials to which a new utility can be given, and separating recyclable waste.<\/p>\n
Anything that has been left over then goes to fuel for energy, creating a \u201ctotally circular\u201d process, Arano added.<\/p>\n
In addition, Calidad Pascual has incorporated environmental criteria in the design of packaging and, since 2010, water consumption in the group\u2019s factories has fallen by almost 30%, according to company sources.<\/p>\n
Up to 70% of water resources end up as low-value by-products or must be treated, which represents a high cost.<\/p>\n
The EU-funded WaSeaBi project, with the participation of the Basque technological centre AZTI, was launched to increase the exploitation of water resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look for any part that is wasted within the value chain such as fish fractions in its cleaning process, cooking and desalination waters for cod, or mollusc shells\u201d, said AZTI researcher Bruno I\u00f1arra.<\/p>\n
From there, new animal feeds can be obtained for livestock or pets and aromatic compounds such as fish bouillon cubes or flavours for ready-to-eat meals.<\/p>\n
The director of Innovation of the Technological Agrarian Institute of Castilla y Le\u00f3n (ITACyL), Cristina Le\u00f3n, points out that it is necessary to maximise the use of resources as much as possible to increase profitability, but warned that \u201cmany novel processes and technologies have a high cost\u201d.<\/p>\n
Castilla y Le\u00f3n (northwest Spain) has put in place several initiatives to take advantage of chestnut, potato, whey, wheat bran and oat waste.<\/p>\n
This Spanish autonomous community last year invested \u20ac2.6 million on the agri-food bioeconomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of research needs to be done,\u201d said Le\u00f3n, adding that \u201cwe have looked for alternatives with bioprocesses to obtain products that we previously made from oil because it was easier and cheaper.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the creation of new flavours and aromas from waste by-products to maximising water use, Spanish companies are rising to the challenge to deliver on the EU\u2019s circular economy plan in a number of innovative ways. EURACTIV\u2019s partner EFEAGRO reports. Research investigating how best to maximise the life cycle of products, as part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[15963,10416,5817],"supplier":[2317],"class_list":["post-74385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-cap","tag-circulareconomy","tag-research","supplier-european-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74385"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=74385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}