ECOFUNC is reshaping building materials with biobased panels designed for real-world performance, safety, and circularity

Construction is one of the world’s biggest industries, but it is also one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise. ECOFUNC starts from that reality. The building and construction sector accounts for more than 35% of global final energy use (but around 40% in Europe), about 37% of global carbon emissions, up to 50% of natural resource use, and roughly half of total solid waste.

ECOFUNC focuses on three products that are everywhere in modern buildings: cladding for ventilated façades, suspended ceiling tiles, and internal partition walls. These products shape the performance, appearance, durability, and comfort of buildings. Today, they are usually made from materials such as ceramics, gypsum, glass fibre, and fossil-based components that are energy-intensive, difficult to recycle, or both. ECOFUNC sets out to change that by developing circular, biobased, and functional alternatives that can perform in real buildings, not just in the lab.

The problem

The problem is not only that current construction panels have a high environmental footprint, but there lies a deeper problem: the sector still lacks scalable alternatives that combine sustainability, technical performance, regulatory compliance, and recyclability. In particular, there is still a shortage of biocomposite solutions for façade cladding, ceiling tiles, and partition walls that reach at least TRL 6, meet industry standards, and can be integrated into real industrial value chains.

That gap matters because buildings do not accept under-performing materials. A new panel must resist fire, moisture, mechanical loads, wear, and ageing. It must also meet indoor air quality requirements, acoustic targets, and thermal performance thresholds. ECOFUNC therefore treats sustainability and performance as inseparable. The project is not trying to replace conventional materials with ‘greener’ options that ask the market to accept lower quality. ECOFUNC is developing panels that are meant to meet demanding construction specifications for flexural strength, fire classification, weatherability, water absorption, sound reduction, and indoor emissions.

There is also an end-of-life problem. Conventional panel systems often lock together materials that are hard to separate and hard to reuse. ECOFUNC addresses that bottleneck directly. The project is designed around circularity from the start, from the initial material design to mechanical recycling routes into furniture and automotive applications, and chemical recycling routes that aim to recover high-value molecules for reuse in new production chains.

The opportunity

ECOFUNC sees a major opportunity to redesign a high-volume market with materials that are lighter, cleaner, and more circular. The project aims to establish the first circular value chains in the EU and associated countries, bringing the full chain from raw materials to finished products to TRL 7.

The opportunity is environmental, economic, and industrial at the same time. ECOFUNC targets more than 60% reduction in total life-cycle carbon footprint in the production stage compared with benchmark products, more than 85% biobased or recyclable material content, and at least 90% of processes meeting Do No Significant Harm criteria. It also targets up to 20% lower life-cycle costs than conventional panels, with about 90% of those savings expected to come from lower operational and maintenance costs.

The opportunity goes beyond construction. ECOFUNC is intentionally designed to create spillovers into automotive and furniture applications. That matters because scale is one of the biggest barriers to new materials. By validating products in multiple sectors, ECOFUNC improves the chances that the European industry can build demand, reduce costs, and strengthen supply chain resilience around biobased materials. The proposal projects six new circular value chains in the short term and an additional four value chains in the medium term, alongside revenue and market uptake ambitions linked to sustainable panel products.

The approach

ECOFUNC’s approach is systematic (Fig. 1). First, the project develops the raw materials. CO2BioClean develops carbon-negative polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA. ECOFUNC chose PHA because its properties can be tuned for different applications, and because PHA offers a rare combination: it is biobased, processable, durable in service, and fully biodegradable in natural environments without leaving microplastics. Helian Polymers compounds the PHAs for foams, matrices, and reinforcement fibres with support from additives supplied by Avient and biobased flame-retardant systems developed by Tecnalia. Vestaeco works on pretreating straw fibres so they bond effectively with PHA in biocomposite boards.

Second, ECOFUNC converts PHA compounds into engineered intermediates and panels. Centexbel processes PHAs into continuous and chopped fibres, turning the continuous fibres into woven textiles. Next Technology Tecnotessile and Cormatex turn chopped fibres into nonwoven textiles and develop nonwoven core boards based on natural fibres and PHA. VTT develops PHA-based self-reinforced composite (SRC) face-skins and self-standing panels using woven and nonwoven textiles. VTT also uses computer modelling to optimise layer structure, thickness, and performance. Volar Plastic scales up SRC panels and face-skins to full size. Fraunhofer ICT develops foamed PHA core boards. Vestaeco develops straw-reinforced biocomposite core boards. Acciona then coats SRC panels and consolidates face-skins with core materials into multilayer panels for ceiling and partition applications.

Third, ECOFUNC validates performance at full scale. The project plans to manufacture full-size coated SRC panels, SRC face-skins, and straw-reinforced, nonwoven, and foamed core boards. Acciona will install the panels in real construction settings and monitor humidity, internal temperature, heat flux, and air quality for at least six months, comparing results with conventional solutions.

Fourth, ECOFUNC builds circularity and market readiness into the project itself. Centro Ricerche FIAT validates ECOFUNC materials for automotive uses. Kastamonu Entegre develops furniture recycling routes using panel waste. The University of Birmingham develops pilot-scale chemical recycling for PHAs. Civitta leads life-cycle assessment, life-cycle costing, techno-economic analysis, socio-economic analysis, and business modelling. Unimos Alliance leads communication, dissemination, exploitation, IP-related support, stakeholder engagement, and awareness building. Tecnalia also ensures compliance with Safe and Sustainable by Design and DNSH principles across the project.

The key innovations

ECOFUNC’s innovation is not a single material. It is an integrated platform of 11 technologies that link feedstock, formulation, processing, validation, and recycling. The project develops novel PHA grades for different functions, biobased intumescent flame retardants, melt-spun fibres, woven and nonwoven textiles, self-reinforced composite panels, straw-based biocomposite boards, foamed core boards, multilayer panel systems, and both mechanical and chemical end-of-life routes.

One major innovation is that ECOFUNC aims to bring PHA-based self-reinforced composites into construction applications where performance requirements are high and current solutions are rarely circular. Another is the combination of biobased face-skins with different core architectures: nonwoven, foam, and straw-reinforced boards. That gives ECOFUNC flexibility to tailor thermal, acoustic, fire, and mechanical performance to different building uses.

A further innovation is the project’s circular design logic. ECOFUNC does not stop at making a panel. It is designed for what happens after service life. The same material family is developed with future recycling in mind, including recovery into furniture particleboards, automotive components, and chemically recycled PHAs suitable for reuse. The proposal targets recovery of at least 70% of panel materials for automotive reuse, at least 50% recycling or repurposing into furniture applications, and chemical recovery of at least 85% of PHA by weight with at least 95% purity.

The impact

ECOFUNC’s impact ambition is unusually broad. Environmentally, the project targets a manufacturing-phase global warming potential below 0.5 kg CO2-eq per square metre in the project objectives, and the impact section points to more than 60% lower production-stage carbon footprint than benchmark products, more than 85% biobased or recyclable content, and medium-term avoided emissions estimated at 20.8 mt CO2 per year.

Economically, ECOFUNC aims to make biobased panels competitive rather than niche. The proposal links that to scale-up, business modelling, new value chains, and premium products that deliver long-term value through sustainability, compliance, performance, and lower life-cycle cost. It also connects ECOFUNC to market uptake in Europe first, with possible expansion into other large construction markets.

Technologically, ECOFUNC can help move PHA-based construction products from promising research into industrial reality. Societally, ECOFUNC aims to improve awareness and acceptance of safe and sustainable biobased materials through field trials, pop-up events, swatch books, videos, podcasts, stakeholder sessions, and policy roundtables.

ECOFUNC’s real significance is that it treats construction materials as a system problem. It connects resin production, advanced processing, building performance, circular end-of-life routes, and business uptake. If ECOFUNC succeeds, façades, ceilings, and walls will no longer be passive building elements made from hard-to-recycle conventional materials. They will become high-performance circular products built for a low-carbon economy.

Please note, this article will also appear in the 26th edition of our quarterly publication.