PAWN | PAWN - Full Biodegradable Disposable Baby Diapers

Summary
About 40% of modern disposable baby diaper consist of super absorbent polymer (SAP), a component that is neither skin friendly nor biodegradable. As a result, each year 21 bn used diaper generate 10M tons of plastic waste in Europe. This waste ends up either in incinerations, where it does not provide a good calorific value due to the high liquid content of the used diapers, or in landfill (about 2.6M tons yearly). The industry as well as the consumers have been searching for eco-friendly alternatives for years, but the material mix in diapers and the high quality and safety requirements for baby products have made this undertaking impossible so far.
There are biodegradable alternatives for the outer non-woven fabrics of the diaper, but these do not yet reach the comfort and skin-friendliness of standard PP-based materials. The situation is even worse for the superabsorbent core, for which no fully biodegradable alternative with satisfying absorbency is available. In the PAWN project, we will bring to the market the first disposable baby diaper that fulfils al requirements. For this aim, the consortium brings together Polygreen (Israel), a start-up company that has developed a biodegradable SAP, Avgol (Israel), a market-leader in non-woven materials, who will integrate a technology to make PolyPropylene materials biodegradable, Celltex (Slovakia), a producer of baby diapers, Wilogis (Germany), a distributor of eco-friendly hygiene products and Novis (Germany), specialists in waste valorization and life cycle analysis.
Over 5 years, the PAWN project will generate €136M of revenues and €30M of profit. The project is highly profitable and will deliver a ROI of 6.66.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/965715
Start date: 01-12-2020
End date: 31-05-2023
Total budget - Public funding: 3 959 155,00 Euro - 2 771 408,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

About 40% of modern disposable baby diaper consist of super absorbent polymer (SAP), a component that is neither skin friendly nor biodegradable. As a result, each year 21 bn used diaper generate 10M tons of plastic waste in Europe. This waste ends up either in incinerations, where it does not provide a good calorific value due to the high liquid content of the used diapers, or in landfill (about 2.6M tons yearly). The industry as well as the consumers have been searching for eco-friendly alternatives for years, but the material mix in diapers and the high quality and safety requirements for baby products have made this undertaking impossible so far.
There are biodegradable alternatives for the outer non-woven fabrics of the diaper, but these do not yet reach the comfort and skin-friendliness of standard PP-based materials. The situation is even worse for the superabsorbent core, for which no fully biodegradable alternative with satisfying absorbency is available. In the PAWN project, we will bring to the market the first disposable baby diaper that fulfils al requirements. For this aim, the consortium brings together Polygreen (Israel), a start-up company that has developed a biodegradable SAP, Avgol (Israel), a market-leader in non-woven materials, who will integrate a technology to make PolyPropylene materials biodegradable, Celltex (Slovakia), a producer of baby diapers, Wilogis (Germany), a distributor of eco-friendly hygiene products and Novis (Germany), specialists in waste valorization and life cycle analysis.
Over 5 years, the PAWN project will generate €136M of revenues and €30M of profit. The project is highly profitable and will deliver a ROI of 6.66.

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

EIC-FTI-2018-2020

Update Date

26-10-2022
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Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.2. INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP
H2020-EU.2.1. INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies
H2020-EU.2.1.0. INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Cross-cutting calls
H2020-EIC-FTI-2018-2020
EIC-FTI-2018-2020