From Challenges to Opportunities - fiber-based materials in a circular future

In a high-level panel discussion, I discussed the challenges and opportunities of fiber-based materials in relation to the circularity. It turned out that the topic is very broad and interrelated. In any case, too broad to discuss conclusively in just over an hour. Whereas conclusive or final can never be achieved anyway when it comes to circular economy and sustainability, I'd like to mention the key messages:

• System innovation based on a holistic view of the circular bioeconomy and end-of-life scenarios is required to open up new areas of applications for fibre-based materials
• Opportunities and strengths of fibre-based materials not yet fully exploited
• Use of consequential LCA including societal aspects instead of LCA of single products
• Interdisciplinary research approaches focusing on multicycle use and circularity by design
• Availability of fibre-based materials has to be secured by e.g. higher efficiencies to recover fibres from waste other than paper&board or exploring new loops of fibre recycling

Higher interdisciplinarity in education and research at university as well as in industry are necessary to make decisive progress in the topics of Circularity.

Only those companies that seriously address the issues of circularity and sustainability will be successful in the long term.

Thank you EPNOE Association for the very interesting discussion with:

Frank Miletzky from Technische Universität Dresden

Prof. Dr. Markus Wildberger from Koehler Paper

Wolfgang Bauer and Ulrich Hirn (Technische Universität Graz )

Peter Bekaert from Modellfabrik Papier gGmbH

Markus Biesalski from TU Darmstadt

Tobias Stern from University of Graz

BioBASE_GmbH & Austropapier