A novel plastic with useful properties can easily be recycled again and again

Plastics have become indispensable in modern life and the material of choice in packaging applications, but they have also caused increasing plastic waste accumulation in oceans and landfills. Although there have been continuous efforts to develop biodegradable plastics, the mechanical and/or transport properties of these materials still need to be significantly improved to be suitable for replacing conventional plastic packaging materials. Here we report a class of biorenewable and degradable plastics, based on copolymers of γ-butyrolactone and its ring-fused derivative, with competitive permeability and elongation at break compared to commodity polymers and superior mechanical and transport properties to those of most promising biobased plastics. Importantly, these materials are designed with full chemical recyclability built into their performance with desired mechanical and barrier properties, thus representing a circular economy approach to plastic packaging materials.

Due to its abundance and a wide range of beneficial physical and chemical properties, cellulose has become very popular in order to produce materials for various applications. This review summarizes the recent advances in the development of new cellulose materials and technologies using ionic liquids. Dissolution of cellulose in ionic liquids has been used to develop new processing technologies, cellulose functionalization methods and new cellulose materials including blends, composites, fibers and ion gels.

Polymeric materials have been accumulating in the environment for decades as a result of the linear way of consuming plastics. Unfortunately, the current approaches followed to treat such a large amount of plastic waste, mainly involving physical recycling or pyrolysis, are not efficient enough. Recently, chemical degradation has emerged as a long-term strategy towards reaching completely sustainable cycles where plastics are polymerised, depolymerised, and then re-polymerised with minimal changes in their quantity or final properties. Organocatalysts, which are promising “green” substitutes for traditional organometallic complexes, are able to catalyse depolymerisation reactions yielding highly pure small molecules that are adequate for subsequent polymerisations or other uses. Moreover, by varying several reaction parameters (e.g. solvent, temperature, concentration, co-catalyst, etc.), the depolymerisation products can be tuned in innumerable possibilities, which further evidences the versatility of depolymerisation. In this review, we highlight the recent advances made by applying organocatalysts, such as organic bases, organic acids, and ionic compounds, to chemically degrade the most commonly used commercial polymers. Indeed, organocatalysis is envisaged as a promising tool to reach a circular and environmentally friendly plastic economy.