ECODESIGN Highlights Progress at the SustaiNext General Assembly
The SustaiNext project held its fifth General Assembly on 19–20 November 2025 in Turin, marking the midpoint of its work to develop sustainable processes for high-value botanical extracts in Extremadura, Spain. Across the consortium, progress is visible in plant construction, cultivation, biomass pre-treatment and early steps toward market applications.
ECODESIGN’s Role
ECODESIGN supports the project by assessing the environmental, economic, social, and circularity performance of the emerging biorefinery and its products. At the Turin meeting, we presented recent results, including:
- Lower greenhouse gas emissions for highly concentrated extracts produced through a cascade valorisation approach.
- The project’s first scientific publication, led by ECODESIGN, focused on the Life Cycle Assessment of selected olive leaf extract: Life Cycle Assessment of selected olive leaf extracts.
- The Life Cycle Cost Assessment (LCCA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) indicate promising viability of botanical extracts for premium applications in nutraceuticals and cosmetics
- The Social-LCA results reveal so far that workers of the biorefinery benefit from best of class working conditions, and that the existing cooperation with suppliers bring potential to roll-out training programs and quality guidelines for farmers and suppliers.
- ECODESIGN also developed a circularity framework for the project, and presented circularity indicators and metrics, covering the value chain, such as crops from rehabilitated lands, organically produced feedstocks, renewable energy produced and used, organically produced extracts, use of waste from other value chains, and water use and reuse.
Looking Ahead
The project moves forward for another two years and ECODESIGN continues work on the Life Cycle based assessments, to help demonstrate that the project brings real impact in this region.
