Assessment of supply chain sustainability of bio-composite materials
(Topic B.7)

– How to connect technical, economic and environmental analysis to understand the biomaterials use in our society –

The research trend of the modern chemical engineering is going towards a real integrated multiscale approach in order to increase the productivity and the progress of scientific instrumentations. This kind of research has been performing in order to obtain better products in terms of sustainability and lower costs of production, taking into consideration the increasing problem of the waste production starting from the design-phase of the product and its cascade utilization.

The research in the production of biodegradable material is an actual global competition which attracts the interests of multiple scientific branches. A deep connection between the production phase and the environmental performances of the material at disposal stage is nowadays studied at the early stage of the product development.

The biodegradable materials are produced for the needs of different commercial sectors as the food, packaging and agro-industries. Currently, the biopolymers designed for agricultural use have a great attraction thanks to their potential of being disposable into the soil, which promote the starting of the degradation phase.

The present Ph.D. project investigates the biodegradability of different materials and performs an economic/environmental analysis to assess the sustainability of the supply chain of agricultural biopolymers in Chile, Germany and Italy answering to the following questions:
- In which way do biopolymers affect the agricultural and industrial supply chain?
- What is nowadays the final use of biopolymers: Reuse, Recycling or Disposal?
- What are the environmental impacts of agricultural biopolymers vs. standard products?
- In which of these three countries is producing biopolymers more sustainable?

The supply chains will be analyzed in depth: a Life Cycle Costing (LCC) will be performed to assess the economic sustainability of new products and a detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model will be developed to evaluate the environmental impacts, comparing the peculiar aspects of each examined country and highlighting the differences between the supply chain of biopolymers and standard products.