The increasing volume of resources demanded by a growing world population, and the concomitant need for safeguarding nature, has led to the development of a second generation of technologies that use bio-waste as a resource for diverse industrial sectors. Bearing in mind the widespread availability and significant potential of agri-food and forest wastes in particular, this review intends to provide an overview of the current scientific, technological and commercial trends on valorization of these bio-resources. To that end, the specialized literature on circular bioeconomy (CBE), major high added-value product typologies, their feedstocks and respective processing technologies are reviewed and framed in face of relevant patent literature and commercial products. Scientific articles are focused on chemicals for varied industrial sectors, derived essentially from agri-food wastes by using biotechnological processes. Patents and commercial products focus is also on agri-food wastes but mainly on products for the food industry and using predominantly physical processes, seldom combined with chemical and biotechnological processes. Societal benefits of products and processes, including environmental perspectives, are most frequently cited and aligned with the CBE concept. Despite the significant evolution observed in the last two decades, and an increasing volume of related patents, CBE research is not yet significantly mirrored by the market, showing that its full potential is still far from being realized. For further progressing towards an impactful CBE, it is suggested that there is a need to develop further evidence that CBE-inspired products are indeed preferable to their fossil-based counterparts, from both the economic and societal points of view, including environmental sustainability, and to communicate extensively the findings to the society at large.
This work has been developed in the context of the INTERREG POCTEP project "INBEC - Circular bio-economy. Promotion and development of a sustainable economy through innovation and business cooperation" (ref. 0627_INBEC_6_E). The funding program is not responsible for the opinions expressed by the authors. The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) and FEDER under Programme PT2020 for financial support to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020)
