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Enabling a future of safer laundry products and cleaner oceans

Project description

Doing laundry the green way

Everyone loves that fresh out-of-the-washer scent, but this can carry a huge environmental footprint. To provide long-lasting freshness, most commercial laundry products contain fragrance microcapsules which are made from toxic and non-biodegradable materials that end up in the oceans. The European Chemicals Agency says up to 60 000 tonnes of microplastics intentionally added to products like detergents leak into the environment yearly. To help reverse this disastrous trend, the EU-funded EnviroCaps project is developing state-of-the-art biodegradable microcapsule technology. The goal is to to make clothes smell better with these capsules than existing non-biodegradable products currently on the market.

Objective

Getting clothes to smell fresh after laundering and drying is no easy task. To solve this, fragrance microcapsules are now used in all laundry products. They reduce the amount of fragrance in the final product by up to 10 times, and provide long-lasting freshness to clothes during use.
Unfortunately, these microcapsules are made from toxic and non-biodegradable materials which at the end of their lifecycle, accumulate in the oceans, contributing to the global microplastic epidemic.
The European Commission is leading a world-wide effort to eliminate all non-biodegradable microplastics in consumer products, starting from 2022. However, today, there is no biodegradable microcapsule technology and thus, no solution for laundry product manufactures to produce safe and high-performance products.
To solve this problem, Calyxia has developed a game-changing scalable process to produce the world’s first perfectly sealed biodegradable microcapsule technology, EnviroCaps.
EnviroCaps are readily biodegradable microcapsules that are formulation stable and provide an olfactory performance 2 times greater than existing non-biodegradable alternatives. The patented technology has been validated by large actors in the market.
Support from H2020 SMEi2 for EnviroCaps, leveraged by Calyxia investment, would accelerate Calyxia’s access to the international market by transforming a functional microcapsule prototype (TRL6) into an industrial product (TRL9) with over 5000 tonnes EnviroCaps production in 2028 . In 2028, Calyxia will aim to achieve sales of €250 million, representing a market share of 25%, establishing Calyxia to a European and Global leadership position.
To succeed in this ambitious endeavour, Calyxia has assembled a world-leading team of entrepreneurs, expert scientists and engineers, alongside executives from the chemical industry, all united to build a new world of safer, environmentally sustainable and advanced performance laundry products.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020

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Coordinator

CALYXIA SAS
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 259 600,00
Address
2 AVENUE DES ORANGERS
94380 Bonneuil-Sur-Marne
France

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Val-de-Marne
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 3 228 000,00
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