RecEgg - Net Zero

**Annually, \\\>250,000 tonnes of eggshells** are produced in Europe.

This waste is biologically hazardous.

Companies in the egg processing industry contract waste companies to remove/treat this waste, **\\\>£100/tonne, \\\>£25million across Europe.** Hitting the processing industry's profitability.

Impacting the environment significantly with Landfill, which leads to acidification/eutrophy producing 15 kilotonnne sulphur dioxide, 6,25 kilotonne phosphate and **\\\>1 million tonnes carbon dioxide/year,** which is mirrored in Asia and N.America**.**

Eggshells offer the untapped natural resource of calcium carbonate (CaCO3).

**The European Pharmaceutical industry uses over 100,000tonnes/year, worth£65-140m (£800million globally).** This material has issues;

\* **Poor environmental credential** -- large carbon footprint from mining and importation, conflicting with the goals of the Green House Gas Protocol's Scope 3on supply chains.

\* **Contamination** with TOXIC HEAVY METALS, with rejection at \\\>20%, costing the European Pharmaceutical industry **\\\>£30m/year**

**VISION and OBJECTIVES -** The REC-EGG process was developed to provide a completely circular recycling process for waste eggshells. This process separates shell and membrane, purifies the shell producing pharmaceutical grade CaCO3 (outward process) and recycles its own waste streams (return process). Leaving us with pure calcium carbonate, eggshell membrane and a low carbon foot print. We are working with a UK supermarket with future plans to engage both global engineering and mineral companies to access these global market.

In IUK supported **project 91752** we were able to prove the outward process on a small industrial scale, however due to COVID and logistical problems we were unable to prove the return process.

This project will take the core of the outward process, converting the shell into pharmaceutical grade CaCO3 and scale it up to give us a process and material minimal viable product (MVP1) (TRL7). This will be of sufficient size to eliminate our primary sponsors waste problem.

The shell/membrane separation and return process will be considered outside of this projec (ERDF and IUK Fast Start, **project 10044543** funded respectively)