The European project BIOSMART aims to develop active and smart bio-based and compostable packages that make possible: light weighting, reduced food residues, shelf life monitoring, longer shelf life and easier consumer waste handling.

In this project, the role of iCoSys is to bring expertise in the treatment and analysis of the data generated by the other project partners.

A web application is created that facilities the design packaging solutions, with regards to the desired packaging properties, such as transmission rates, brittleness and other physical properties.

An important interest of the industrial partners is in the multi-criteria optimization routines that we are currently developing. A typical target is to minimize the cost per square meter of a package while respecting the constraints of pre-set transmission rates. The transmission rates are important in packaging as they give an indication of shelf-life of the food product. Further, it is a goal to propose bio-based and compostable alternatives to the classic packaging solutions.

Additionally, the correct disposal of plastic packaging is not always trivial. Therefore, there is the development of a mobile application allowing to scan a product barcode and to display information about the different package designs and polymers and their correct disposal in planning.

This project has received funding from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 745762.

The project successfully completed on 31st of December 2021. Check out the “Results in Brief” article summarising the collaboration published on the CORDIS website in six languages.

Another “closure” publication has now been made available, referring to BIOSMART under the title: “A push to ensure fresh foods end up getting tasted instead of wasted“. A short movie was also created to mark the end of the project.