Ocean plastics are of utmost global concern due to their impact on the environment, society, and economy. This perspective addresses the major contributing sources of ocean plastic pollution, their effects, and promising mitigation strategies.

There are many limitations within three-dimensional (3D) printing that hinder its adaptation into industries such as biomedical, cosmetic, processing, automotive, aerospace, and electronics.

There are millions of tons of post-food processing residues discarded annually. Currently, these waste materials are discarded to landfill, used as animal feed or incinerated. This suggests that there are potential uses for these materials in value-added applications. This work focuses on the characterization and valorization of peanut hulls through the generation of green composites. Peanut hulls were pyrolyzed at 500 °C and analyzed to discover their unique surface morphology and relatively low ash content. Raman spectral analysis determined I_D/I_G values of 0.74 for the samples, suggesting greater graphitic content than disordered carbon content. Such results were confirmed in X-ray diffraction analysis by the presence of (002) and (100) planes. Partially biobased engineering thermoplastic, poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT), was combined with 20 wt.% biocarbon. The tensile and flexural moduli improved with the addition of biocarbon, and the bio-content increased from 35 to 48 wt.% as compared to neat PTT. The higher temperature biocarbon was found to have superior performance over the lower temperature sample. The enhanced sustainability of these materials suggested that peanut hulls can be valorized via thermochemical conversion to generate value-added products. Future works could focus on the optimization of these materials for non-structural automotive components or electrical housings.

Currently, food waste is a major concern for companies, governments, and consumers. One of the largest sources of food waste occurs during industrial processing, where substantial by-products are generated. Fruit processing creates a lot of these by-products, from undesirable or “ugly fruit,” to the skins, seeds, and fleshy parts of the fruits. These by-products compose up to 30% of the initial mass of fruit processed. Millions of tons of fruit wastes are generated globally from spoilage and industrial by-products, so it is essential to find alternative uses for fruit wastes to increase their value. This goal can be accomplished by processing fruit waste into fillers and incorporating them into polymeric materials. This review summarizes recent developments in technologies to incorporate fruit wastes from sources such as grape, apple, olive, banana, coconut, pineapple, and others into polymer matrices to create green composites or films. Various surface treatments of biofillers/fibers are also discussed; these treatments increase the adhesion and applicability of the fillers with various bioplastics. Lastly, a comprehensive review of sustainable and biodegradable biocomposites is presented.

With over 1 billion tons of food waste generated annually, there is potential for the waste to be re-purposed. The generation of products from food-industry waste not only reduces the environmental burden of the materials but gives a new value to waste. A common waste material from the food industry is chicken feathers (ChF), a by-product of the chicken meat processing industry. In this work, ChF were subjected to slow pyrolysis at varying temperatures. A complete analysis was completed to determine the yield, ash, chemical composition and morphology of the samples. X-ray diffraction analysis indicated that lower temperature samples were more amorphous, whereas higher temperature samples exhibited more graphitic content. After characterization, the biocarbon was combined with poly(lactic acid) (PLA) to generate sustainable 100% biobased composites. Both composites had moduli that were more than 115% greater than that of the neat polymer. The success of the composites demonstrated that ChF biocarbon can be used as a sustainable and cost effective filler. The use of this material gives new purpose to a waste product and contributes to the goal of sustainable product development.

Fluorescent carbon dots for the selective and sensitive detection of Fe ³⁺ ions with a wide detection range and very low detection limit.