In nature, there is no such thing as waste. Elements like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur move through ecosystems in endless cycles – constantly transforming, renewing, and returning to the earth. This principle of circularity is at the heart of ANIPH.
Funded by the EU, ANIPH is a healthcare project developing next-generation wound dressings and recyclable water-barrier packaging. All products are made from bio-based materials that safely break down in the environment, including soil, freshwater, and the ocean.
ANIPH adheres to circular design principles, ensuring that every product can return to nature at the end of its life.
The biobased and biodegradable plastic products (BBpPs) developed within the project belong to the PHBV and PHA biopolymer families. These products are specifically designed for humanitarian contexts in which proper waste management is often unfeasible, such as war zones and places hit by natural disasters.
The ANIPH products will be:
Engineered to offer modern wound care solutions while ensuring a minimised environmental impact.
Designed to be recyclable and biodegradable in all relevant environments, supporting both product integrity and ecological responsibility.
Implemented to predict biodegradation, material properties, and ecotoxicity, while ensuring the traceability of materials and products.
Current fossil-based plastic products take between 100 and 1000 years to degrade, thus harming the environment.
ANIPH will enhance the application of circular economy principles throughout the entire lifecycle of its products.
Designing a-priori the lifecycle of BBpPs is extremely challenging, as biodegradation must be regarded as a ‘system property’, considering material properties, the receiving environment, and a specific evidence-based timeframe.
ANIPH will develop a tailored design of BBpPs lifecycles, controlling the key factors affecting biodegradation in all relevant environments.
Current standards test methods to assess plastics biodegradation in open environments have low reproducibility and do not consider all the material and environmental factors involved in the process.
ANIPH will propose an innovative approach to ensure reproducibility and standardisation of biodegradation assessment.
The lack of an enabling environment hinders the development of BBpPs. Inadequate governance and insufficient stakeholder information may well slow down the BBpPs value chains.
ANIPH will contribute to creating an enabling environment, through Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) approaches, and contributing to Information and Labelling Systems on products.
Nature is where everything originates and eventually returns. It is precisely from nature that renewable residues are extracted, and it is back to nature where ANIPH’s wound dressings and packaging biodegrade, closing the loop of their lifecycle.
ANIPH’s materials begin in nature and ultimately return to it.
Renewable biological residues serve as our starting point, and the final wound dressings and packaging are designed to biodegrade safely in natural environments, closing the loop of their lifecycle.
Sugar-rich liquor residues and hydrolysed yeast from brewing streams provide the carbon and nitrogen sources needed for fermentation.
Together with additional raw materials such as volatile fatty acids, these inputs are tested as co-feedstocks to produce PHBV with a controlled and elevated 3HV content (15–30%). By adjusting feedstock combinations and fermentation parameters, we can precisely influence the chemical composition and crystallinity of the resulting polymers.
During upstream production, renewable residues and selected raw materials are converted through optimised fermentation into PHBV and PHN.
At this stage, the focus is on achieving the required polymer structure and crystallinity, while ensuring efficient extraction. These biopolymers form the sustainable base material for later formulation work.
A formulation and compounding strategy will be developed to achieve stable and processable PHA compounds for the different target applications while programming biodegradation.
This allows us to balance processability, mechanical and thermal properties with a safe, enhanced biodegradation, all aimed at developing the target compounds.
As a result of the previous process, PHBV and PHN compounds are developed.
With the addition of specific additives, including stabilisers, processing and biodegradability enhancers, and nucleating agents, ANIPH bio-based compound are the direct inputs for both extrusion and 3D printing.
Through cast or blown extrusion and 3D printing, the bio-based compounds are transformed into our final products. Parameters such as design, surface-to-volume ratio, and processing conditions are fine-tuned to optimise performance.
In 3D printing, additional medical bio-additives, such as probiotic cellulose, provide alternatives to conventional antibiotics for the wound dressings.
The final outputs include single-use wound dressings and their water-barrier packaging.
Both are developed to be recyclable and biodegradable across relevant environments, supporting both product integrity and ecological responsibility.
Once used, ANIPH’s products naturally biodegrade in suitable conditions, completing their journey from nature back to nature.
The ANIPH General Assembly confirmed significant progress on bio‑based materials and traceability.
ANIPH presented by CETEC at the IX International seminar on biopolymers and sustainable composites by AIMPLAS
ANIPH’s circular approach lands at the BioCircular Summit 2026 in Madrid.
