Agricultural residues a new business opportunity as single-use plastics are phased out

The way we use plastic needs to change. Single-use plastic can today have major consequences for animals and nature when it turns into garbage. And there is a lot of litter – about 85% of marine litter in the EU is made up of plastic.  

Agriculture can complement the forest for plastic substitutes. Therefore, the need for alternatives to plastic is great. A possible and proven replacement is wood fibre from the forest, but today the competition for the raw material that the forest provides is great, and the price is relatively high. Can there instead be residual streams that can be made of material, that grow relatively quickly and which are also a cheap raw material that would otherwise be lost?

The answer can be found in agriculture, a large industry with several different untapped residual streams, for example from crops such as sugar beet, wheat bran, oat husks and reeds. Today, some are used as animal feed, but much is burned or thrown away. In many cases, these can work at least as well as wood to make new materials from.  

"One example is cider presses, which have lots of peels that are thrown away but can be turned into vegan leather. There are also international examples where residues from corn production become barrier materials for packaging," says Juhanes Aydin, Head of Unit at RISE. 

Beer production can provide raw material for several different materials  

In some cases, it is a matter of using the rest as it is, but most often processing and refining are needed to produce different fractions such as fibre, carbohydrates, fats and proteins. They, in turn, become building elements for new materials that act as, for example, packaging. 

"Breweries get a lot of draff (a by-product of beer production) left over from their processes, where we look at what else can be gained from the leftovers. What you can extract in the form of fibres or proteins in turn indicates what type of material you can make," says Juhanes Aydin. 

The fact that the various side streams of agriculture contain more than just fibre, makes them versatile and attractive as raw materials in packaging.  

"The material has different character depending on what it is, there are big differences in properties and it is needed – it is not always water that the packaging should be a barrier to, it can be things like oil or oxygen. This places different demands and then it is important to have access to materials with different properties,” says Juhanes Aydin, who also mentions the aesthetic aspect as important – if a package is made of oat husks, you often want it to be visible, not least for marketing purposes. 

"I am quite sure that there will be a great demand for products made of these materials. Not least when it comes to packaging for food from grocery stores or restaurants. There is no need to choose wood over materials from agriculture,” says Juhanes Aydin. 

Much remains to be done – but the expertise is there 

Different businesses need to find their area of use and model and then use RISE's experts in different ways:  

"We test how to extract different components and get the right properties, help with prototypes, look at how this can work in an existing process, do life cycle analyses and review business models and profitability," says Juhanes Aydin.  

Sweden's focus on wood fibre has meant that there is so far no reprocessed chain to take advantage of agricultural residues in an efficient way. 

"In Germany and Holland, these residual streams are much more exploited. There, for example, manufacturers of vegan leather go around and pick up the material from different farmers and then refine it," says Juhanes Aydin.