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5 September 2013 | 8h25

Erik Orsenna joins the Board of Directors at Carbios, the young innovative company specializing in the recycling of plastic waste

  • What if plastic waste became a cost-effective, reusable raw material for industry?
  • What if we could break down plastics using new bioprocesses?
  • And what if plastic waste became an opportunity for industry, rather than a burden?

 

 

Carbios today announced the appointment of Erik Orsenna to its Board of Directors. Carbios, a green chemistry company that specializes in the development of innovative industrial bioprocesses, offers novel, economically competitive approaches to recycling plastic waste and producing biopolymers.

 

Following the announcement of key collaborations (notably with the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, INRA, and the French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS), Carbios is proud to welcome such an eminent figure to its Board of Directors. Erik Orsenna’s experience as an economist, writer and essayist gives him the authority to express his views on the major economic and environmental challenges that we are now facing and make him an obvious choice to guide Carbios forwards.

Erik Orsenna shares Carbios’s conviction that plastic waste should be a renewable raw material and wrote “Raw materials are gifts given to us by the Earth” in his book “Voyage aux pays du coton: Petit précis de mondialisation [Journey to the Lands of Cotton: A Brief Manual of Globalization]. This concept is perfectly in tune with the Carbios approach. Following his appointment, Erik Orsenna stated that “I am delighted to be joining Carbios – a company that develops innovative biological solutions to the ever more worrisome economic and environmental problem of plastic waste”.

Carbios CEO Jean-Claude Lumaret welcomed the appointment of a person who is known for his in-depth knowledge of crucial issues, such as sustainable development and globalization. “Carbios has always joined forces with the best in the business to meet the major challenge facing us: although the volume of plastic waste is increasing all the time, a mere 20% is currently recycled in France! The key issue is how we can turn this waste into useful, recyclable or degradable materials”. After thanking Erik Orsenna for his decision to join Carbios and support the company’s efforts as a board member, Jean-Claude Lumaret concluded by saying “If we look at the life cycle of polymers in a new way, we can envisage turning plastic waste into a new, value-adding raw material”.

Carbios leads a major cooperative project: THANAPLASTTM

THANAPLASTTM is a leading project in the field of the recovery of plastic waste at the end of its useful life. It brings together a number of academic partners (the INRA, the CNRS, the University of Poitiers and the Toulouse White Biotechnology research center) and companies (Deinove, Limagrain and Groupe Barbier). The project involves 60 researchers, has a budget of €22 million over five years and will receive €9.6 million in financial support from the French state innovation agency OSEO. Carbios will provide the lion’s share of the budget (€15 million) and will receive €6.8 million of the OSEO funding.

The THANAPLAST™ challenge: To create genuine industrial value from plastic materials at the end of their useful life by developing cutting-edge technologies capable of producing, transforming and recycling a wide range of plastics from patented processes using biological catalysts with exceptional properties. “The synergies that we have created by pooling our skills will act as a formidable vector for accelerating innovation, which is essential for the development of breakthrough industrial procedures”, emphasized Jean-Claude Lumaret.

 

  • Erik Orsenna joins the Board of Directors at Carbios, the young innovative company specializing in the recycling of plastic waste

    5 September 2013 | 8h25

    What if plastic waste became a cost-effective, reusable raw material for industry? What if we could break down plastics using new bioprocesses? And what if...