The EU needs to start tapping unconventional biomass to grow its bioeconomy.
This is according to a new report that took stock of the EU’s bioeconomy potential.
Opportunities for Innovation in the Bioeconomy by the European Environment Agency, released July 2025, states the EU economy needs to increase its flow of biological raw materials to support a domestic renewable materials industry.
One way to do this without falling back on imports is by drawing on unconventional feedstocks:
- Fishery discard
- Agricultural waste
- Forestry waste
- Processed food waste
- Marine algae
Already, there are many European startups dedicated to each of these feedstock categories.
These innovators offer the EU a firm foundation for scaling novel biomass processing capacity.
But first, why are European agencies interested in increasing its domestic biomass rather than simply importing its raw material requirements?
The EU’s raw material worries
Securing industrial raw materials supply has become top priority for the EU ever since the start of the COVID pandemic and resulting trade disruptions. Raw materials for the bioeconomy has been no exception.
The goal is to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers so that in the event of conflict or disruption, the EU can sustain critical industries.
More supply without more land
The EU’s ecosystems can provide only half the capacity needed to sustain current resource use in the region.
One thing that the EU cannot do, however, is to simply grow more crops for industrial use.
Bringing new areas of land under cultivation competes with wildlife and habitat conservation. If the EU wants to meet its biodiversity targets, it will have to look at other ways to boost its domestic biomass supply.
The report highlighted several unconventional feedstocks, each with applications across different industries.
Agricultural waste: compostable polymers, packaging fillers, microbial growth medium
Each year the EU generates around 700 million tonnes of agricultural waste – more than the annual EU wheat harvest, which comes in around 130 million tonnes.
This hefty store of biomass could find uses in the sustainable packaging industry. One company that has taken up this niche is Proservation, founded 2022.
Proservation uses grain husks to create an alternative to styrofoam. The company specifically sources spelt husks from the Ländle region, which the company says produces around one tonne of the stuff per day, per mill.
Proservation calls its grain residue material an ‘ecological cushion’, describing it as an alternative to polystyrene packaging filler.
Traceless, founded in 2020, is another German company using up agricultural waste to create higher value goods.
Traceless is a little more developed in its commercial journey. Rather than focusing on a single material from a single feedstock as Provservation does, their offering is a broad-based platform that extracts materials from different kinds of agricultural residues.
These natural materials are home compostable, meaning that they will readily break down in a home compost pile and do not need special processing to be made safe for the environment.
Agricultural waste also has biotech applications. Zymofix is a category-defying circular startup that rears functional microorganisms on agricultural waste.
The company first harvests agricultural waste and converts the material into a high quality substrate for beneficial organisms. These organisms are then fed back into the food system, sold onto farmers that apply them to the soil.
Forestry residue: personal care ingredients
The Nordic countries are the centre of wood waste biomaterials innovations. This is because of the huge forestry industry that exists across this part of northern Europe.
Finland’s Montinutra is taking wood sugar and turning it into luxurious personal care products. The sugar, derived from trees, contains antioxidants and holds uses in skin care and hair care.
The company doesn’t take the sap from living trees, however. Its feedstock comes as a byproduct from sawmilling – a huge industry in Finland where there are over 12 million cubic meters of wood sawn annually.
The basic material can be altered for use as industrial binders and barrier coatings too.
Estonia’s Fibenol creates biochemicals from hardwood chips. These foundational chemicals can then be turned into all manner of goods, including biofuels, cosmetics, and alternative sugars. The process it uses minimises waste – over 90 percent of the biomass inputs will become marketable materials, indicating a very efficient process.
Processed food waste: cosmetics, drinks, biodegradable packaging
This feedstock category starts a little down the food chain – the uneaten byproducts of grocers, food factories, supermarkets and restaurant dining.
In Warsaw, Poland, startup Rebread is turning unsold bread into a number of consumer products.
Rebread turns the unsold bread into a clean, standardised raw material. This can be used as a base material in the food industry but also for biotech (as a medium for bacterial cultivation) and in packaging or cosmetics.
Huge amounts of bread go to waste each year thanks to a short-shelf life and rampant overproduction.
This poses an ecological problem since all the agricultural resources that go into cultivating and processing the grain become effectively wasted, enlarging the environmental footprint of the food system.
Fishery discards: alternative protein, biogas, fishscale leather
Fishery discard may seem like a waste product with few higher value uses. However, these cast-offs are feeding into one of Finland’s most innovative biotech startups – Hailia.
“We take the whole fish, grind it, and recreate the structure…it’s not gritty. It has the mouthfeel of cooked fish,” according to Michaela Lindström
Hailia’s approach to using up the whole fish resonates in the context of a crisis in global fisheries.
3.1 billion rely on fish for 20 percent of their daily protein intake. 800 million relying on these animals for food and income. Yet with a growing global population, the gap between sustainable protein and human need will grow.
Finding innovative ways of making more of the caught fish palatable to consumers could ease pressure on wild populations.
Fish waste has uses beyond food. Company Green Gas AS uses it, alongside other organic matter, as a feedstock for energy through its biogas plants.
Fish discards could soon be hitting the runway thanks to LVMH-backed Ictyos, which turns waste fish skin into sustainable leather.
The startup was founded by three chemical engineers that saw valuable fish skin going to waste in restaurants around their native France. Even the tannins they use to treat the fish skins are biobased rather than minerals, as in traditional leather production.
Fish waste leather is less harmful to the environment than traditional leather from livestock. It is also a good way of cleaning up the fishery industry.
Creating luxury goods soaks up discarded scales, solving the unseemly problem of decomposing fish waste which generates carbon dioxide and can poison the environment.
Marine algae: biopolymers, cosmetics ingredients
Marine algae may not be waste but it is a highly sustainable source of biomass. It can be processed into many of the biochemicals and biomaterials needed in industry with just a fraction of the inputs that land-based agriculture needs.
Northwestern France has a rich history of seaweed harvesting. Today, startups in the region are creating high value chemicals from them.
Algaia from Brittany, France uses algae to produce biopolymers that go into stabilising cosmetic gels. Using biobased chemicals like these can avoid the need for many petrochemical ingredients so common in modern makeup.
Another Brittanny-based algal startup is Algopack, which makes packaging material from the plant.
The problem with waste
Drawing on unconventional biomass sources is not without its technical challenges.
Certain kinds of biomass are not economically viable to process. Emerging methods may be needed to fully exploit these alternative sources of raw materials at a commercial level. Compared to crops grown specifically for industrial purposes, agro-waste is of uneven quality and hard to sort. They can be tough to transform into a consistently high-quality product in a way that is cost effective.
Microbes to the rescue
The answer lies in new processing methods. Microbial biorefineries (or conversion plants) are an emerging and cost-effective way to turn waste into new goods.
Certain microbes produce high value compounds either by metabolising waste feedstock into the target chemical or by releasing enzymes that alters it chemically.
Microbes are nature’s biotech platforms. They are so effective at performing complex chemical conversions that they can significantly bring down the costs of working with even poor quality waste materials.
In Europe, some microbial biorefinery capacity has been in commercial operation for some time. However, since 2020, a new generation of companies have sprung up, selling microorganisms that can make light work of a wider variety of waste products.
Emerging European microbial conversion startups include AmphiStar from Ghent, founded in 2021. It uses microbes to turn waste into biosurfactants, a substance in cleaning fluids and soaps.
Switzerland’s Albatros meanwhile uses AI to identify the best microorganisms to digest different agro-waste byproducts and turn them into human food. These microbes concentrate the nutrients dispersed through agro-waste. The results are ingredients and additives that maximise protein and nutrition.
Another waste-to-food startup is ÄIO, founded 2022, which is using microbes to turn agricultural and wood byproducts into edible, animal-free fats.