ReSolute’s Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

The European Sustainable Development Week (ESDW) is taking take place from 20 to 26 September and the ReSolute project has many contributions to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). An initiative that started in 2014 to make visible activities and projects that promote sustainable development, the first ESDW was held in 2015, and calls on local stakeholders to actively engage in sustainable development. The event aim to raise awareness of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.

What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as “The Global Goals for Sustainable Development” are a collection of 17 global goals designed to be a blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The SDGs, set in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and intended to be achieved by the year 2030, are part of a UN Resolution called “The 2030 Agenda”.

ReSolute’s Contributions?

Under ReSolute, which received €11.6 M in funding from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI-JU) under grant agreement No 887432,  the project will contribute to the following 6 SDGs:

SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

ReSolute aims for a representative gender balance in the consortium, based on the equal opportunity policy in the recruitment phase. No activities that favor men or women will be implemented.  The project management board will be responsible for verifying the gender ratios in the respective teams of the consortium participants.

SDG 8: Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all

ReSolute, as a producer of valuable chemicals from food biomass, will create a diversified source of growth for paper mills that are often located in rural areas, decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation. In addition, the project will create local jobs with more than 40 direct and 120 indirect jobs, increasing health protection for workers typically exposed to traditional reprotoxic solvents.

SDG 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation 

ReSolute will build a first-of-its-kind industrial plant, fostering the creation of new bio-based value chains and establishing new connections between different sectors. The project will implement an innovative and sustainable industrialization process – Furacell™ – that valorizes wood biomass into the platform molecule levoglucosenone (LGO) and its derivative Cyrene™, a safe and high-performance biosolvent that meets market requirements for different applications.

SDG 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns 

ReSolute will operate the plant as an integrated biorefinery that will convert cellulosic biomass waste into a variety of products without generating waste. Biochar, a residue from the production of Cyrene™, will be converted into activated carbons. Moreover, the process has a low water demand, a high percentage of which can be recirculated, increasing efficiency in the use of natural resources through sustainable management.

SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts 

ReSolute will accelerate the decarbonization of solvent production from non-renewable resources, as woody and non-food biomass resources, such as sawdust or crop residues, will be valorized. Thus, the carbon footprint of solvents will be reduced compared to their petroleum-based equivalent. Furthermore, Cyrene™ contains no N heteroatoms (unlike NMP, DMF and DMAc) and no S heteroatoms (unlike DMSO), which means that pollutant emissions of NOx and/or SOx are avoided during its use or at the end of its useful life, if burned.

SDG 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources

To reduce marine pollution of all kinds from land-based activities, Resolute will produce a biosolvent-Cyrene™-which has been shown to be readily biodegradable and to have no effect on fish, aquatic invertebrates, cyanobacteria and microorganisms.

SDG 15: Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss

ReSolute biosolvent, which can be recycled without problems by reduced pressure distillation, will increase the protection of nature. Finally, in recognition of its positive impact on the environment, Cyrene won Top Product 2019 in the Environmental Leader (EL) and Energy Manager Today (EMT) awards in May 2019 and was awarded Business Intelligence’s Sustainability Product of the Year in August 2019.

Registration for the event here: https://esdw.eu/register/

RESOLUTE at the next IFIB 2021

The ReSolute project will be present at the two-day event entitled International Forum on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioeconomy.

The forum, which will take place from September 30 to October 1 in Trento, northern Italy, aims to strengthen the circular bioeconomy network in the Euro-Mediterranean area and to promote partnerships between the different actors involved in its value chain such as start-ups, large companies, universities, and public & private research centres.

ReSolute will be presented as a success story of the industrialization of a biocircular pathway by a start-up. Christophe Luguel, European Director of the IAR cluster, will give an oral lecture in which he will present different European projects that are scaling up their innovation to the commercial phase. 

The event will be held in hybrid due to COVID-19, and registration is now open!

To know more: https://ifibwebsite.com/

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The project, which will run for 36 months from October 2020 to September 2023, has a total budget of €23 M and has received funding of €11.6 M from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI-JU) under grant agreement No 887674. The BBI-JU is a public-private partnership supported by the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation Programme and the Bio-Based Industries Consortium (BIC). During the 7 years of the programme (2014-2020), BBI-JU has funded several flagship biorefineries across Europe and ReSolute is one of them.

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Conference details

IFIB, September30 – October 1, 2021 |Hybrid

Organizers: Assobiotec-Federchimica, Cluster Spring and InnovHub

Registration: https://ifib-2021.b2match.io/signup