Circular Economy and Sustainability

The food industry is characterized by highly interconnected value chains of both a very local and global nature. If nothing else, the coronavirus crisis showed us that resilience to any type of disruption is increasingly becoming a decisive competitive advantage. But what does a resilient value chain look like?

During the production of food, huge amounts of non-edible waste such as peels from citrus fruits and potatoes or blood from the meat industry are produced. Their disposal as waste or together with the dirty water and also the hygienic cleaning of equipment lead to an enormous amount of wastewater...

Milk, quark and cheese are part of the daily food intake. How energy, water and carbon dioxide emissions can be saved in the production of such foods is what the just recently started EU Project SUSMILK shows. Under the leadership of Fraunhofer UMSICHT, 21 project partners are developing components that contribute to the sustainable processing of milk and a redesign of the dairy industry via their use in existing dairy infrastructures.

The German Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture (BMEL) is supporting the SmartPigHome project with 1.6 million euros as part of the Federal Program for Livestock Husbandry. The joint project involves the development of an interactive game system focused on animal welfare, creating a smart barn environment for pigs and optimizing it as the “mood in the barn” changes.

Mulch films are indispensable in agriculture thanks to their versatile functions. However, they are made of oil-based plastics, which significantly pollute agricultural soils and the environment. In the joint project »NewHyPe«, a sustainable solution to existing mulch films is therefore being developed to replace microplastic-generating plastic products with bio-based alternatives.