B4Plastics is a Polymer Architecture company, catalyzing the introduction of novel biomaterials, and growing them from niche to bulk applications. As an architect creates your dream house, we create your dream plastic. We design and scale the materials that give your application the best balance between function, ecology and cost. Not by searching the best mix of existing materials, but by creating and optimizing their backbones from scratch, in our polymer architecture labs. From there, we match them with your key requirements for your target applications, scale them to pilot quantities for your validations and certifications, and finally guide them to ton-scale productions. First come, first serve. And if appropriate for your market: exclusive serve. We create the backbones that become the cornerstones of the New Plastics Economy, and of your success. The strongest degradable material in the world? The best controlled degradable material in your application? Just tell us, and we start designing, building, scaling, supplying…
If you have been searching for a better solution to bring you in a materials pole position in your market: step into our website and contact us. We give you a green joyride!
GLAUKOS
New biobased and biodegradable fishing nets and textiles.
B4Plastics helps to bring fish to your dish in a more sustainable manner. Via the EU research GLAUKOS project, we facilitate more urgent, decisive, and imaginative actions to transition from fossil-based plastics to recyclable and degradable textiles and fishing gear
The Problem
Plastic waste in our oceans is, unfortunately, ubiquitous. From plastic bottles and bags disposed of carelessly, to fishing equipment such as nets, lines, and traps – either purposefully cast astray or which have broken free during use and left to drift in the open ocean as so-called ghost nets – the problem is rife. While there is no doubt these nets and other visible objects harm marine wildlife, it can be argued that the invisible plastics pose a greater challenge and threat.
Microplastics – conventional plastics that have turned brittle and broken into minuscule pieces – are almost invisible to the naked eye. Many of these microplastics enter the food chain via marine plankton, surreptitiously working their way up to the fish on your dish. Microplastics affect us all, and are getting under our skin. Literally.
The Solution
B4Plastics is a Polymer Architecture technology company, radically designing the most ecological yet strong materials suited to the end application. We envision that strong and durable fishing gear and textiles can be designed to avoid further plastic pollution of marine environments, and of our daily lives. Based on its library of BioBased Building Blocks (B4), B4Plastics balances out the strongest possible materials but which still remain biodegradable.
SMARTBOX
New specialty polymers based on bio-aromatic building blocks derived from wood.
B4Plastics is inventing and upscaling new eco-plastic materials made out of wood. The materials are designed to have the best balance between function, cost and ecology in their target applications. Via the EU research project SMARTBOX, we can fulfil this mission starting from the local woody waste streams of biorefineries.
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The Problem
Today, most of the plastics we use in our daily lives are so-called “virgin” oil-based plastics. These polymers incorporate freshly produced petrochemicals as monomers from oil refineries. Moreover, they rely on fossil resources and travel thousands of kilometers to reach us in Europe.
Common plastics not only travel from far away but their production processes applied in oil refineries also demand high temperatures and pressures – in stark contrast to that of nature. And, of course, this energy consumption is again…(yes, you guessed it) fossil. B4Plastics’ eco-plastics are fixing this, meeting half of Europe’s new Green Deal ambitions!
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Petrochemicals
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Oil refineries
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Fossil fuel
The Solution
The core of B4Plastics is to design and develop bioplastics that incorporate biobased building blocks (B4). This means we step away from fossil fuels and carefully choose monomers that can be obtained from greener alternatives, such as biorefineries. Their low temperature and pressure processes use biomass, such as wood, as an energy source and therefore offer more local options.
SMARTBOX aims to make biorefineries more cost-competitive and environmentally sustainable by using the synergy between a catalytic fractionation technique and bio-enzymes that together can turn wood as biomass into renewable monomers for plastics, such as bio-aromatics. These added-value building blocks can be introduced into new bio-based products which offer a sustainable alternative to virgin oil-based plastics.
Together with our partners in public-private research of SMARTBOX, B4Plastics uses bio-aromatics as local biobased building blocks to design new specialty polymers. With these unique monomers, we aim to develop locally and renewably resourced products with new ecological features for a more sustainable plastics future and a greener world.