NO-PLASTI-CUPS — new project

NO-PLASTI-CUPS is a European, industry-led pro­ject sup­por­ted by aca­dem­ic and research part­ners. Its main object­ive is to devel­op a fully nat­ur­al, biobased coat­ing made from plants, sea­weed, and agri­cul­tur­al byproducts, which can be applied to paper­board to pro­duce sus­tain­able dis­pos­able packaging.

The pro­ject focuses primar­ily on cups for hot and cold bever­ages, such as cof­fee and beer, as well as takeaway con­tain­ers for wet foods, includ­ing soups.

The con­sor­ti­um brings togeth­er 14 organ­isa­tions, includ­ing com­pan­ies, uni­ver­sit­ies, research centres, and NGOs, cov­er­ing the entire value chain of coated pack­aging. This col­lab­or­at­ive approach ensures that the final products meet high stand­ards of tech­nic­al per­form­ance, envir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity, and mar­ket relevance.

The developed coat­ing and pack­aging will be assessed to con­firm their bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity, recyc­lab­il­ity, and home com­posta­bil­ity under real-life con­di­tions, ensur­ing min­im­al envir­on­ment­al impact. Man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses will be optim­ised to reduce resource con­sump­tion and car­bon emis­sions, in line with Life Cycle Assess­ment (LCA) objectives.

In par­al­lel, beha­vi­our­al stud­ies and design research will improve under­stand­ing of con­sumer dis­pos­al habits and end-of-life prac­tices, help­ing to max­im­ise the envir­on­ment­al bene­fits of the products.

By the end of the pro­ject, strong indus­tri­al part­ner­ships will be estab­lished to sup­port the trans­ition from pilot-scale pro­duc­tion to com­mer­cial deploy­ment bey­ond TRL 5. NO-PLASTI-CUPS will con­trib­ute to the devel­op­ment of Europe’s green eco­nomy and sup­port the shift from fossil-based pack­aging towards cir­cu­lar, renew­able, and bio­de­grad­able alternatives.

NO-PLASTI-CUPS is devel­op­ing and val­id­at­ing a nat­ur­al, bio­de­grad­able coat­ing based on plant- and sea­weed-derived mater­i­als for use in dis­pos­able cups and food con­tain­ers. The coat­ing is being cre­ated through an iter­at­ive research and devel­op­ment pro­cess, com­bin­ing labor­at­ory-scale innov­a­tion with indus­tri­al-scale validation.

Biobased raw mater­i­als are sup­plied by con­sor­ti­um part­ners spe­cial­ising in agri­cul­tur­al byproducts and sea­weed poly­mers. Labor­at­ory devel­op­ment and optim­isa­tion are led by Not­pla and AIM­PLAS, while paper­board adapt­a­tion is car­ried out by RAIZ. Pilot-scale pro­duc­tion and upscal­ing are man­aged by Poly­techs and Walki, who are also respons­ible for con­vert­ing the coated mater­i­als into pro­to­type cups for test­ing and validation.

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity is a core ele­ment of the pro­ject. Early and final Life Cycle Assess­ments are con­duc­ted by UCL, while bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity and eco­tox­ic­o­lo­gic­al test­ing is car­ried out by Ply­mouth Mar­ine Labor­at­ory. These activ­it­ies are com­ple­men­ted by the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence tools to sup­port bio­de­grad­a­tion pre­dic­tion and envir­on­ment­al assessment.

Plastic Punch con­trib­utes research on lit­ter­ing and product per­form­ance in devel­op­ing coun­try con­texts. Linköping Uni­ver­sity leads stud­ies on labelling and com­mu­nic­a­tion to improve con­sumer under­stand­ing of prop­er dis­pos­al. In par­al­lel, con­sumer test­ing with Com­pass Group eval­u­ates product per­form­ance in real food­ser­vice environments.

The pro­ject aims to advance the coat­ing tech­no­logy to TRL 5 and estab­lish robust path­ways for indus­tri­al­isa­tion and com­mer­cial­isa­tion. This work is sup­por­ted by techno-eco­nom­ic ana­lyses and detailed exploit­a­tion planning.

Over­all, NO-PLASTI-CUPS provides a prac­tic­al and scal­able altern­at­ive to fossil-based plastic coat­ings. It demon­strates how nat­ur­al mater­i­als can deliv­er reli­able per­form­ance while sup­port­ing the reduc­tion of plastic pol­lu­tion and the trans­ition towards a cir­cu­lar, low-impact pack­aging sec­tor in Europe.