Who can't relate to it, carrying heavy boxes after visiting a furniture store or the anger about tons of plastic and polystyrene after buying electrical devices? The EU-funded research project "Securing Sustainable Dendromass Production with Poplar Plantations in European Rural Areas", in short Dendromass4Europe, is focusing on the corresponding innovations for more eco-friendly purchases that are safer on the back.   Scientists and industrial partners from seven countries will work together for the next five years. Professor Norbert Weber of the Professorship of Forest Policy and Forest Resource Economics at Technische Universitaet Dresden coordinates the project:

"With this large-scale project and together with our European partners in industry and research we want to achieve several things at the same time: to generate wood biomass from poplars in an environmentally friendly way and use the biomass to produce innovative products. Of course such a project requires many colleagues from different disciplines to work together. In the team of TU Dresden, experts from silvics, wood and plant chemistry, wood and fibre technology, genetics and forest utilization have come together."

What exactly is the project about:
Dendromass4Europe (D4E) aims at establishing sustainable, Short-Rotation Coppice (SRC)-based regional cropping systems for agricultural dendromass on marginal land that feed into bio-based value chains and create additional job opportunities in rural areas. For that purpose, 2,500 ha of short rotation poplar plantations will be established on marginal or currently unused land in rural areas of the Slovak Republic. These plantations will provide the feedstock for the establishment of four new bio-based value chains based upon products from wood and bark from poplar trees: (1) functionally adapted lightweight board manufactured by IKEA, whose new interior gives more stability to the boards, which will be lighter and consuming fewer resources. Poplar bark, which currently serves primarily as a source for energy, is processed into (2) eco-fungicidal moulded fibre parts. These fibre parts can replace plastics in packaging and can also be re-used without any problems. At the same time, the bark is planned to be incorporated into (3) bark-enriched wood-plastic composite and (4) multi-purpose wood-plastic granulate.

The researchers of the National Council for Research (Italy), Ökoforestino Ltd. (Hungary), the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden) and Technische Universitaet Dresden support the industrial partners involved, with their expertise in the fields of agriculture, forestry and wood sciences. In the project participate the Kompetenzzentrum Holz GmbH (Austria) and Daphne, Institute for Applied Ecology (Slovakia) providing expertise on ecological questions of management. Stakeholders, especially the respective scientific and industrial communities, e.g. those of forest sciences, agricultural and forest policy, nature conservation and bio-based materials research will be informed and involved during the entire project for example via field demonstrations, publications and a project website as well as social media.

This project receives funding from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 745874.

Media inquiries:
Prof. Dr. Norbert Weber
Tel.: 035203 383 1828

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