Read STEPS Annual Report 2022!
Read about STEPS’ work and activities during 2022! In our Annual Report, we highlight what has been happening within our three work packages, within our missions, and overall programme developments. We also feature interviews with four of our recent PhD researchers, who have all defended their theses, either in 2022, or early 2023.
We also share interviews with STEPS board members and work package researchers.
We are very proud of what STEPS has achieved in 2022!
STEPS Annual Report, front cover. Illustration: Catrin Jakobsson.
Message from Management - reflections on the year 2022
Returning to normalcy in 2022 after two years of the Covid 19 pandemic was a welcome relief. For several STEPS partners it meant meeting in person for the first time after two years of online meetings since the start of the second phase of the programme. The spring programme meeting, in the beautiful surroundings of Bäckaskog castle, thus presented a great opportunity for face-to-face discussions and activities. With increasing interest in Sweden and the European Union on sustainable plastic use and circular economy, and the negotiations for a global plastics treaty, we believe that STEPS´ threepronged research strategy of developing biobased plastics, design of plastics for enhanced recyclability, and plastic governance for transition to a sustainable plastic system, is sound. STEPS researchers are now increasingly invited to many of the important conferences and other national and international plastic related events e.g. in Almedalen, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s Plastdag, and expert meetings with the European Environment Agency, to name a few activities this past year.
On the academic front, one of our doctoral students in work package two, focusing on biobased polymers, defended his thesis on biobased polyesters and polyurethanes, and several other doctoral students have been getting ready to defend their theses during 2023. There is also a marked increase in the number of publications produced by the programme in scientific journals. One previous STEPS article, “Designing biobased recyclable polymers for plastics,” published in a highly ranked journal, Trends in Biotechnology, has been listed among the 25 most cited articles in the journal since 2020, a testimony to the growing impact of our research. The 2022 paper on plastics and climate change published by STEPS researchers in work package three which focuses on plastic governance is also attracting great interest. It brings to light the complexity of the current plastic system, requiring integrated solutions that are beyond managing plastic litter and single use plastics. Decarbonisation of the plastic industry is an issue that our management group colleague, Lars J Nilsson, brings forward in one of the lPCC sixth assessment reports, on climate mitigation, where he is the lead author for a chapter on industry.
Since we started the second phase of the programme, the focus in STEPS has moved towards upscaling of building blocks and polymers for technical evaluations as well as economic and environmental assessments. Some of the management group members have been instrumental in identifying the candidates for scale up, while the STEPS Board has been generous to support these efforts with the strategic reserve funds. Plastic recycling is another research activity that is taking shape within STEPS. These changes reflect our programme’s desire to make a sustained, practical impact with our research, and to test results and processes together with industry. Our aim is to develop some more demos and applications before the programme ends in 2024.