AWARD YEAR
2021
CATEGORY
Community
GOALS
Zero Hunger, Good Health & Well-being, Climate Action, Life Below Water, Life On Land
KEYWORDS
plastics, insects, biorefinery, up-cycling
COUNTRY
Sweden
DESIGNED BY
Nathalie Berezina, PhD, founder
WEBSITE
https://norbite.eu/
Norbite
Norbite transforms plastic waste into sustainable goods by means of an insect-based biorefinery.
The selected insect, Galleria mellonella, possess the extraordinary capacity to naturally digests plastic.
Norbite took advantage of this feeding specificity of G. mellonella and has developed a proprietary vertical farming technology to enable the insects to perform at industrial scale.
To produce sustainable goods, thus obtained larvae are bio-refined to get proteins, for food and feed; antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) - to fight multidrug resistant bacteria (MDR); elicitors – to reinforce natural plants’ defences and avoid the utilisation of pesticides; and even the dejections of the insects are used as biofertilizers, making this process a perfect example of circular economy.