The Carl Zeiss Foundation is funding the "DELIVER - Data-driven Engineering of Sustainable Living Materials" project at the University of Freiburg in its "CZS Wildcard" program. In the project, scientists from the Freiburg Clusters of Excellence CIBSS and livMatS will develop sustainable wood-based materials whose properties can be precisely controlled.

Across the EU, more than 300 billion items of packaging are not recycled every year because they consist of a mixture of different materials. Monomaterial packaging on the other hand is easy to recycle. However, it needs to be coated with ultra-thin barrier layers to protect delicate products just as well as compound materials do.

More animal welfare and better animal health, more climate protection and less environmental impact: Researchers at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart are pursuing these goals with a new approach: They are exploring the interplay between farm animals and the millions of microorganisms in the animals’ digestive tracts. The federal and state governments are supporting the university with the construction of a unique research center for around…

Basic chemicals, which are needed as raw materials for a wide range of products such as medicines and detergents, can currently only be produced with an enormously high input of energy and raw materials. In many cases, fossil fuels and raw materials are still used. The extraction of chemical substances alone requires high temperatures, expensive catalysts made of precious metals and, in some cases, environmentally harmful starting materials.

The glass facade of a high-rise building can get so hot that you can fry eggs on it – a major factor in the overheating of our cities. At the same time, flood events such as torrential monsoon rains cause billions of dollars of damage annually. On October 4, 2022, a solution to both problems was presented at the University of Stuttgart.

Fossil raw materials are limited and not available and extractable everywhere in the world – as we are becoming acutely aware of right now by the example of fossil fuels and rising energy prices. Renewable raw material sources will therefore play an increasingly important role in the future: as energy sources, but ideally also as suppliers of building blocks for more environmentally compatible chemicals and materials.

In its statement of September 2, 2022, the Bioeconomy Council of the German government condemns the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine and points out ways in which the resulting food and energy crisis can be alleviated with the help of the bioeconomy.

In Provence, the lavender fields are in full bloom again. This blaze of color may soon also be seen in Baden-Württemberg. In a joint research project, the German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research Denkendorf (DITF), the University of Hohenheim and the company naturamus are testing suitable lavender varieties and developing energy-efficient methods for producing essential oil from them.