Read STEPS Annual Report 2023!
We are delighted to share our Annual Report 2023 with you! It contains news, updates and impacts from 2023, as well as interviews with our researchers and industry partners!
We hope you will enjoy reading about our activities, and the research we have done.
STEPS Annual Report 2023 front cover. Download the report.
Message from Management
As we enter the final year of the STEPS programme, it is both timely and relevant to reflect not only on the past year, but on the entire programme period to get a perspective on our achievements and what is left to do. The past years have seen EU implementing a set of policies to support transition to a circular plastics economy. Besides banning single use plastics, enhanced recycling of plastics has been the main focus in contrast to decoupling of plastic production from fossil feedstock. There are also ongoing Global Plastics Treaty negotiations among 160 UN member countries, which are supposed to be finalised around the same time as the STEPS programme. These negotiations are being closely monitored by STEPS researchers attending the different sessions during 2023 in person.
For STEPS, the year started with three of our PhD students from each one of the three work packages successfully defending their theses. We are also proud of the two students from work package two in STEPS who have moved on to do their postdoctoral studies at the prestigious universities Stanford and MIT in the United States.
External communication has been a strong feature of STEPS. We participated in a Mistra organised event in Almedalen to discuss the importance of packaging irrespective of the future of the food systems, presented at Naturvårdsverket’s annual Plastbubbel in Stockholm, and organised two events during Sustainability Week in Lund on textiles and plastic recycling. We also organised a summer school on sustainable plastics with help of some STEPS researchers, board members and industry partners, and even guest speakers from academia and industry. We will continue our focus on education in 2024, with a school on sustainable plastics aimed at municipalities, regions and companies.
STEPS researchers continued to be a strong voice in the societal discussions on plastics, featuring in several media articles and interviews on topics such as the Plastics Treaty, large-scale investment in plastic production, and the plastic bag levy which will be abolished from November 2024. We also submitted a grant application with several partners to extend our work on communications related to design, architecture and art, which will allow us to further communicate our work on plastic pathways for a circular plastics economy in new and interactive ways, should it be successful.
Some of the important research activities during 2023 in work package one and two have been scaling up the processes for production of building blocks, polymers, and chemical and enzymatic recycling of plastic including mixed plastic waste. Here, the close interaction with our industrial partners has been extremely fruitful and necessary. Work package three has continued its work on the global plastics treaty process as well as issues around, e.g., the sourcing of green carbon, PET recycling and standardisation, and plastics and financing.
Finally, our collaboration in STEPS has formed the basis for new and fruitful collaboration, something we are very proud and happy about. We secured 10 million SEK in funding for a new project from the Swedish Energy Agency for continuing work on scale up of furan production from lignocellulosic components together with Alfa Laval, Bona, Nordic Sugar and Perstorp. Additionally, we got a smaller fund of 0.5 million SEK from Re-Source for producing and evaluating two furan derivatives in wood coatings; the project is included as a new mission in STEPS.
This annual report will provide you with more insights on our activities as well as reflections from some researchers and industry representatives.
Rajni-Hatti Kaul, programme Director and Professor in Biotechnology at Lund University.