The Bermstroom project was launched in early 2017 under the leadership of the then Waterwegen en Zeekanaal nv, now known as De Vlaamse Waterweg nv. The project is a collaboration between De Vlaamse Waterweg (DVW), the Agency for Roads and Traffic (AWV), Natuurinvest and OVAM. It responds to the (rather unexpected) rising demand for paper on the one hand and the need among governments and nature conservation organisations to find useful applications for roadside grass and thus reduce its costs or even allow it to generate income.

Increasing purchases via the Internet require ever larger quantities of cardboard and ink paper. This is accompanied by a greatly increased demand for waste paper and, at the same time, an increasing scarcity of paper raw materials. The project aims to meet this need by using roadside grass as a raw material for paper production.

The project builds on a technology that has recently been widely used in the Netherlands, using verge grass to produce paper for packaging materials.

Given that the Flemish context is more complex, partly because the Flemish paper industry focuses mainly on high-quality graphic paper, further research is needed.

The innovations required to achieve application in Flanders in the various links of the value chain are shown in the figure below. The PIO project will contribute to the realisation of this new value chain.

The innovations per chain link related to the phase according to the PIO approach:

• Mowing
  • New mowing regime requires new machinery (testing/validation)
  • Bringing new crops (research)
• Transport and storage
  • Innovative ensiling (prototype/testing)
  • GIS/Track and Change (prototype, testing)
• Paper production
  • Technology readiness for graphic paper (prototype, testing, validation)
• Closing the loop
  • Research waste streams as soil improvers (concept, prototype)