The Mount Elgon Tree Growing Enterprise LTD (METGE) is a is a ‘not for profit’ organisation, registered and based in Mbale, Uganda and is supported by the Welsh Government’s, ‘Wales for Africa’ programme through the Size of Wales charity. METGE supports and developes tree growing enterprises in Mount Elgon region in Uganda with the highest environmental and ethical integrity. In October 2019 the programme celebrated the distribution and planting of 10 million trees and it is on course to distribute 25 million trees by 2025 (25/25). METGE produces ~3.2 million tree seedlings each year which are supplied in plastic potting bags made from non-sustainable, fossil fuel derived plastics, including polyethylene. Following the supply and planting of these tree seedlings by beneficiary farmers, there is no defined method of disposing of these used potting bags and they are not recycled or re-used. In order to reduce plastics waste, including material generated from agricultural plastic mulch films which are a major environmental issue in soils across the world including Africa, one of METGE’s priorities is to develop a more sustainable agricultural film wrap to transport and supply its tree seedlings.
The valorisation and upgrading of agricultural residues, including the commercialisation of new biobased products is a key focus of the Uganda Governments Third National Development Plan (NDPIII: 2020/21 – 2024/25), and this project brings together a multidisciplinary team from the UK and Uganda, in order to address the issue of agricultural plastics waste in East Africa.
Bangor University and the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO-Uganda) are collaborating with METGE to develop a more sustainable and biodegradable, biobased film product for packaging of the METGE tree seedlings, which have been produced from agricultural crop residues generated in Uganda.
About the Speaker
With a background in materials chemistry, Adam Charlton has over 25 years experience in collaborative industrial research across different fields, including the development of new functional materials for the telecommunications / molecular electronics sectors and the synthesis of chemical intermediates for the pharmaceuticals industry. His research now focuses on the production of value added materials from biomass, including packaging, with a general interest in biorefining. In his current role at BC, he is Principle Investigator at Bangor University for the BEACON project, a £32million initiative investigating bio-refining in Wales, which is a partnership between Aberystwyth, Bangor and Swansea Universities. He also sits on the management board of BioPilotsUK, an innovation and scale-up programme to support the UK strategy for bioeconomy growth. He is responsible for the Biorefining – Technology Transfer Facility, which houses the BioComposites Centre’s pilot scale equipment on the Island Of Anglesey. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Chartered Chemist.