BYTHOS: Blue Economy for Human Health

When talking about the blue economy, it usually refers to economic activities related to oceans and seas, a definition that covers a wide range of established and emerging sectors. The BYTHOS project, funded with approximately 2 million euros under the 2014-2020 Interreg V-A Italy-Malta Programme and coordinated by the University of Palermo, studied and developed biomolecules from fish waste for the cosmetics and aquaculture industries. It aligns with the recommendations made by the European Commission in 2021 for a sustainable blue economy in the EU. Based on this new approach, marine activities are aligned with the objectives of the European Green Deal, ensuring coherence between the main blue economy sectors, such as aquaculture, fishing, clean energy, maritime transport, navigation, shipbuilding, and coastal tourism.

In Communication COM(2021) 240, the European Commission emphasizes the importance of marine and maritime research and innovation, which are “essential for achieving the European Union’s ambition of climate neutrality by 2050, protecting and restoring marine ecosystems, and making the blue economy a source of ideas and actions capable of stimulating sustainable innovation”.

BYTHOS aligns perfectly with this direction, as it addresses the issue of organic waste disposal from the fishing and restaurant sectors, with the goal of creating economic value through virtuous recycling and reuse processes.

In fact, over 60% of fish tissues are sent to landfills, as they are considered “waste” by the fish processing industries and have no economic value. Globally, this translates into the production of approximately 65.2 million tons of waste, which negatively impacts both businesses, due to the cost of disposal, and the environment, due to the environmental impact they generate.

The idea behind BYTHOS is precisely to reverse this trend. The project led to the creation of a joint laboratory on the island of Lipari (ME), in the Aeolian archipelago: one of Italy’s smaller islands has thus become, thanks to cohesion policy, the protagonist of an innovation story. It now hosts researchers and experts in biotechnology who have developed products based on bioactive molecules (BAM) from fish waste, reducing the amount of organic waste that needs treatment or removal within a community, and creating an economic value chain from organic waste. The laboratory - FRAP UNIT, Fish Residue Automated Processing Unit - has both environmental and socio-economic impacts, providing new job opportunities across the sector.

In the course of the research, the complementarity of fish species from the two geographical areas (Sicily and Malta) provided a rich source of bioactive molecules of interest to the biotech and medical industries. The research focused on the antibacterial, antimicrobial, and anti-tumor properties of the molecules extracted from fish waste, which are of great interest to the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and cosmetic industries.

At the same time, further treatment of fish waste enables the production of eco-innovative fish feed, thus reducing the dependence of the Sicilian and Maltese aquaculture sectors on purchasing from foreign suppliers.

There are two key messages in the BYTHOS project. From a production standpoint, BYTHOS offers the opportunity to assess the potential value of fish waste, particularly in terms of extracting marine collagen, bioactive molecules (with antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-tumor, and regenerative activities), and Omega 3 and 6 fish oils. Marine collagen, in particular, plays a significant role in the project, as it is an important component in cosmetic and skincare products. From the perspective of sustainable resource management, BYTHOS provides tools to ensure “cleaner production” in the fishing industry and food services sector in Sicily and Malta, minimizing the environmental risks associated with waste and promoting circular economy practices and the rational use of fish processing by-products. This approach results in reduced transportation costs for organic waste disposal on the smaller islands.

On the website https://www.italiamalta.eu, you can read and download documents related to 4 procedures and protocols for extracting bioactive molecules, as well as analyses of fish waste characterization enabled by the project. These analyses have provided “surprisingly interesting data on the antimicrobial activity of total and acid extracts from fish industry waste, opening an exciting path for the development of high-value cosmetic-pharmaceutical products,” explained Luigi Inguglia, researcher at the University of Palermo.

“The BYTHOS project,” summarizes Professor Vincenzo Arizza, Director of the STeBiCeF Department at the University of Palermo and Principal Investigator of the project, “stands out for its innovative approach to the problem of organic waste disposal within the framework of circular economy strategies, developing products based on bioactive molecules (BAMs) derived from fish waste, reducing the amount of organic waste, and simultaneously creating an economic value chain. The antibacterial/antimicrobial/anti-tumor products based on bioactive molecules (BAMs) extracted from fish waste are of great interest to the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and cosmetic industries. Further treatment of the remaining fish waste can be used to create eco-innovative fish feed, thus reducing the dependence of the Sicilian and Maltese aquaculture sectors on foreign suppliers. Finally, the project established a joint laboratory aimed at creating economic value through the development of virtuous recycling and reuse processes of organic waste from both fish processing and the restaurant sector. The project involves the Ministry for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change of Malta, the Department of Geosciences at the Faculty of Science of the University of Malta, the Municipality of Lipari, the Sicilian Sea Tourism and Culture District, and AquaBioTech Group.”

The message of BYTHOS is simple: “Turning fish waste into a resource”.