‘today's waste will be the new materials of the future’, ‘linear systems will be circularised’, ‘we will recycle with added value’, ‘we will promote reuse’, ‘we will raise awareness in society’ and ‘we will be more sustainable’

For all this to happen, it is necessary to generate a public network of available waste and developed solutions. This is what Naturklima, the climate change foundation of Gipuzkoa promoted by the Department of Sustainability of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, has done.

The library of materials, Materiategi LabNK, was inaugurated on 29 May. It is located in the Naturklima building and is a pioneering infrastructure at regional and national level.   It has samples of materials representative of the circular economy, produced in Gipuzkoa by companies, research centres and other entities. Among its objectives is the cataloguing of materials representative of the circular economy made in Gipuzkoa and the Basque Country and the promotion of new challenges in the circular economy.

In addition, remote access to Materiategi LabNK is enabled. The website contains a digital file for each of the materials stored in the library.

From GMT we have participated and continue to collaborate with Naturklima to provide solutions for polymeric waste such as polyamide fishing nets, waste collected from the sea of high density polyethylene, waste from the processing of recycled polyolefin beams, in collaboration with Jolas; polyurethane ear tags and wool from latxa sheep. Some of the proposals we have presented : filaments, both polyamide and HDPE for the textile industry, as well as polyurethane+latxa sheep wool composite filament for 3D printing; polyurethane membranes with TiO2 nanoparticles; thermosetting polyurethane based on renewable polyols, developed in collaboration with Tecnalia.

We are proud to share that our GMT group leader, Prof. A. Eceiza, has been recognized among the top 500 female researchers in the CSIC ranking. Congratulations on this well-deserved recognition!

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Last Friday, 29th November 2024, our colleague Stefano Torresi received the MANUEL LABORDE WERLINDEN Award for the work Nanoclik, the result of the research developed in his Doctoral Thesis. Zorionak Stefano!!!

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In collaboration with the Circular Economy University-Company Classroom of the Faculty of Engineering Gipuzkoa, UPV/EHU, Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa) from Thursday 7 to Saturday 9 (November) we will be in the txoko Where does the sea begin?
Under this slogan, primary microplastics and the origin of secondary microplastics derived from the degradation that plastic undergoes in marine conditions will be shown. In this line, the GMT collaborates with the LTC AquEus Transboundary Cooperation Laboratory to advance in the analysis of the effect of these pollutants. It also includes work by the GMT on the mechanical and chemical recycling of marine, urban and industrial waste.
 
For the development of sustainable production processes, aspects such as the waste hierarchy and the efficient use of resources promoted by the circular economy must be considered. For this reason, the GMT has been working for more than 2 decades on the valorisation of compounds derived from waste of renewable origin. These include compounds derived from wood processing, such as tannin and lignin, both of which have a wide range of applications from incorporation in the synthesis of phenolic resins to the formulation of cosmetics. We have also been passionate about the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of latxa sheep wool for many years. Therefore on the stand you will find some examples, such as wool composites processed as biodegradable 3D printing filament and sections of surfboards with wool reinforcement.
We would like to thank Tytti Thursberg, Mater Museoa, Yurre Peñagarikano (URKOME), LTC AquEUS (Euskampus Fundazioa) and all the people of the GMT who have participated in the research.

>> Zientzia astea.

The researchers of our group, Arantxa Eceiza, Laura Vignau and Tamara Garazi Berra, have taken part in the international conference BIOPOL, which took place in Coimbra (Portugal) from July 22th to 24th. They presented the works “Design and Synthesis of a thermo-reversible crosslinker for fully bio-based dynamic thermosetting polyurethanes”, “Poly (3- hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) / chitosan bilayer membrane as magnetically responsive bioactive wound dressing” and “Dynamic Chitosan based shell for Alginate microparticles obtained by microfluidics” respectively.

Last Friday, 12th of July, our colleague Stefano Torresi defended his PhD entitled “Easy functionalizable biobased polyurethane: How to create versatile platforms using click chemistry” supervised by Arantxa Eceiza and Nagore Gabilondo. Zorionak Stefano!

The researchers of our group, Arantxa Eceiza, Izaskun Larraza and Tamara Calvo, have taken part in the international conference Polymers for sustainable future 2024: 85th Prague meeting on macromolecules (PMM) and 11th conference Green Chemistry and Nanotechnologies in Polymeric Materials (GCNPM), which took place in Prague (Czech Republic) from June 24th to 28th. They presented the works “Bio-based recyclable thermosetting polyurethanes by Diels-Alder chemistry”, “Partially and fully bio-based vitrimers: Characterization and recyclability analysis” and “Valorization of TPU waste as filtering membranes for water pollutants”, respectively.

On July 3, 2024 the agreement Circular Economy in Engineering was signed with the Department of Sustainability of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. This agreement includes two lines of work in which GMT will participate. Firstly, we will continue with the study of textile waste, analyzing physicochemical processes of textile waste recycling. In addition, we will evaluate the possibility of incorporating different renewable and recycled materials in the manufacture of the motorcycle that is being developed at the Engineering Faculty Gipuzkoa within the framework of the MotoStudent project.

Dr. Gordobil has participated as an invited speaker in the WWSC Summer workshop 2024 held in Kolmarden (Sweden) and organized by the Wallenberg Wood Science Center. She has presented her research “Impact of emulsification parameters and ingredients on the characteristics of O/W Pickering emulsions stabilized by colloidal lignin particles”.

Our Group researcher Ana Cristina Restrepo presented the work entitled Reciclabilidad de poliuretanos reticulados biobasados mediante enlaces dinamicos in the XI doctoral conference that took place in Murcia (Spain) from June 10th to 12th.

On June 19, 2024, Asier Elejoste Gonzalez, a doctoral student of our group, defended his doctoral thesis entitled: "Banbuaren ezaugarritzea inpregnazio-teknika bidezko modifikazioa eta egitura iraunkorren ingeniaritza" (Characterization of bamboo, modification by impregnation techniques and engineering of sustainable structures). The thesis was supervised by Dr. Cristina Peña and Dr. Amaia Butrón.

In Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, on May 19-23, 2024, the "39^th International Conference of the Polymer Processing Society (39 PPS)" took place, organized by the Polymer Processing Society, Universidad de los Andes, and the Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación del Plástico y del Caucho (ICIPC). Our pre-doctoral researcher, Ana Cristina Restrepo Montoya, participated as a speaker, presenting her research work titled "Targeting Recyclability in Crosslinked Biobased Polyurethanes through Thermoreversible Bonds"

Cristina Peña, researcher-teacher of our group presented the research Analysis of the degradation of plastic marine litter at the EMCEI congress (6th Euro-Mediterranean conference for environmental integration) held in Marrakesh (Morocco) from May 15 to 18 and organized by Springer and the Université Cadi Ayyad and the University of Stax.

Aitor Arbelaiz, Cristina Peña and Ander Larruskain, researchers our group, collaborate with Elhuyar in the project called "Gluoien mahaia". This project, promoted by Elhuyar, has the collaboration of the Department of Economic Promotion and Strategic Projects of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. Under the name "Research for sustainability to inspire young people", the aim is to bring young people closer to the world of research. To this end, with the help of research groups, the young people themselves carry out real research.

The research team of the GMT group has been researching renewable materials for more than 20 years, and one of them is latxa sheep's wool. This type of wool is hardly used nowadays in any sector, and around 2,000 tonnes are generated each year. They have explained this concern to a group of secondary school students from the IES Txindoki in Beasain and have jointly developed composites with latxa sheep's wool as reinforcement that could be used in construction. In a first session they presented the project at the school itself: they explained to the students the aim of the project and the first experimental part. Subsequently, the students were in our laboratories to  develop the mechanical characterization of the specimens obtained and evaluate the results. In a final session, the students will discuss the results with the researchers.

On December 19th, GMT PhD student Julen Diaz Ramirez  presented his doctoral thesis entitled “Valorization of white grape pomace: integrated strategies for advanced applications” supervised by Dr Nagore Gabilondo and Dr Aloña Retegui.

Two researchers from our Group, Laura Vignau and Garazi Berra, had participated in the JIP 2023, XI Congress of Young Researchers in Polymers organized by the specialized group of polymers of the RSEQ and RSEF that was held in Alicante (Spain) from October 2 to 5. They presented the works "Active electrospun poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3- hydroxyvalerate) membranes incorporating antioxidant oil from spent coffee grounds" and "Dynamic redox responsive starch hydrogels" respectively.

Researchers of our group participate in the STEAM-Active project funded by the European Union (2021-1-ES01-KA220-HED-000032107).

The objective of the STEAM-Active project is to generate multidisciplinary teaching and learning sequences for university engineering courses. These sequences will have as transversal axes the circular economy and the gender perspective. In addition, e-learning courses will be generated for the training of teachers interested in the implementation of the designed materials.

Three researchers from our Group, Galder Kortaberria, Agnieszka Tercjak and Junkal Gutierrez, have participated in the POLY-K 2023 conference, “Advances in polymer composites and nanocomposites”, a scientific congress to celebrate the career of Prof. José Kenny. The congress was held in Terni (Italy) from September 13 to 15.

Our Group researcher Agnieszka Tercjak presented a work entitled Self-healable epoxidised soybean oil based thermosetting systems modified with photo-switchable nematic liquid crystal in the conference “Nanostructured Polymers: from precision synthesis to physical properties” presenting the work entitled “”, NANOPOL 2023, in Orléans (France) from September 4th to 8th.

Our pre-doctoral researcher Ana Cristina Restrepo Montoya participated in the 14th International Workshop on Polymer Reaction Engineering, a conference organized by the German Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (DECHEMA), which took place on September, from 5th to the 8th, in Potsdam, Germany. The presented research work "Synthesis of reprocessable biobased thermoset polyurethanes based on Diels-Alder adduct" is developed under the direction of Dr. Ainara Saralegi and Dr. Arantxa Eceiza; and the work "Functionalized electrospun polyurethane membranes as Ag nanoparticles adsorbents" was developed under the direction of Dr. Nagore Gabilondo and Dr. Arantxa Eceiza.