Oldenbourg (GER), January 2026 - Turning green waste, hay and algae into fully biodegradable plastics for use in medical products, car components, insulation and packaging is the goal of a new Junior Research Group at the University of Oldenburg.
Led by chemist Dr Melanie Walther, the team will combine eco-friendly and application-oriented approaches to develop a cost-effective, energy-efficient technology for making innovative plastics based on polybutylene succinate (PBS) which are made entirely out of organic waste. The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) is providing around 2.7 million euros in funding for the EcoPBS project.
"The work of the new Junior Research Group aims to offer plastics made from renewable raw materials as an industrially viable alternative to conventional plastics," said Prof. Dr. Ralph Bruder, President of the University of Oldenburg.
Making bioplastics fully recyclable and competitive
PBS resembles the conventional plastics polypropylene and polyethylene in terms of robustness and processability, with the major advantage of being readily biodegradable. However, scientists have yet to produce an entirely bio-based material that is fully recyclable, and the manufacturing processes are not yet suitable for use in the chemical industry. "For a high yield, you need microorganisms that are easy to grow and stable enough to be efficient in low-cost, low-energy processes," Walther explains.
In three sub-projects, the Junior Research Group will therefore investigate how to turn a biological substrate consisting of garden cuttings and crop waste into Bio-PBS.
Collaboration with external partners and other universities
Melanie Walther has joined the University of Oldenburg to set up the Junior Research Group. A postdoctoral researcher and three doctoral students will conduct research under her supervision.
There are currently nine third-party funded Junior Research Groups at the University of Oldenburg. The aim is to support outstanding and highly qualified early-career researchers like Walther on their path to a professorship or other top-level academic positions.
The other partner universities in the EcoPBS project are the Hanze University of Applied Sciences (Groningen, Netherlands), the University of Twente (Enschede, Netherlands) and the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. The gardening and landscaping company Oeltjen (Westerstede), the research institute Fair-Fusion (Emmen, Netherlands) and the plastics supplier Biovox (Darmstadt) are also partners in the project.
