DECOMPOSE · Degradable commodity plastics from metallosupramolecular polymers

Degradable commodity plastics from metallosupramolecular polymers

Plastic pollution, including tiny fragments known as microplastics, can adversely affect the environment, wildlife and humans. Only a very small percentage of commodity plastics are recycled. Much of the rest is incinerated, sits in landfills or is abandoned in the environment. Biodegradable plastics can ease this problem, especially if these are made from renewable resources. The combination of biodegradability and renewability allows to reduce the use of fossil fuel resources, decrease the material's carbon footprint, and lead to a faster decomposition in the environment. One of the main challenges for the end-of-life of polymers, i.e. what happens to them after their use by the consumer, is the difference in speed of degradation depending on the environment they are in. While most biodegradable polymers degrade readily within composting conditions, marine environments lead to a much slower degradation as a result of the different environmental conditions, namely temperature. One of the slowest step in plastic degradation is the decomposition of plastic materials from the macroscopic (cm to m scale) to the microscopic level (µm to nm). Once at the nanometer level, the polymers are much more exposed to microorganisms and other degradative processes in the environment, speeding up their degradation. This EU-funded project with the name “Degradable Commodity Plastics from Metallosupramolecular Polymers” (DECOMPOSE), provides a solution to this issue by installing water-extractable units within the polymer which massively accelerate the polymer degradation in the presence of water or in marine environments. While this project only showed a proof-of-concept for a certain type of polymeric material, it can be expanded to other types of material. In principle this coul provide another way of controlling the end-of-life of polymers in addition to recycling (chemical or mechanical), burning, and reuse.

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