A team of scientists, in Swiss And Austriathey designed a new one recyclable green plastic similar to PET which can be easily obtained from the inedible parts of plants. The promising hard and heat-resistant plastic could be used for food packaging.
The results of the Research have been published in the scientific journal Nature.
Green plastic obtained from inedible parts of plants: here are some details
The research team ofFederal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) andVienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences have successfully designed a green plastic from biomass, similar to PET, which meets the criteria as an environmentally friendly alternative to several existing plastics.
Several scientists around the world are working on degradable or recyclable polymers made from inedible plant material, or “lignocellulosic biomass”, but this is complex research.. the team of scientists in Switzerland and Austria, coordinated by Jeremy Luterbacher at the EPFL School of Basic Sciencesthink they have succeeded in developing a product that is both recyclable and robust.
“We essentially ‘cook’ only wood or other inedible plant material, such as agricultural waste, into cheap chemicals to produce the precursor to plastic in one step.“, Luterbacher declared:”By keeping the sugar structure intact within the molecular structure of the plastic, the chemistry is much simpler than current alternatives ”.
The technique is based on a discovery that Luterbacher and his colleagues published in 2016where the addition of an aldehyde, an organic compound, stabilized some parts of the plant material and prevented its destruction during extraction.
“By using a different aldehyde, glyoxylic acid instead of formaldehyde, we could simply hook ‘sticky’ groups on both sides of the sugar molecules, which allows them to act as plastic bricks “has explained Lorenz Mankerthe first author of the study: “Using this simple technique, we are able to convert up to 25% of the weight of agricultural waste, or 95% of the purified sugar, into plastic ”.
According to the researchers, the green plastic thus produced could potentially have a wide range of uses – from packaging and textiles to medicine and electronics. The team has already developed packaging films, fibers that could be spun into clothing or other fabrics and filaments for 3D printing.
“Plastic has very interesting properties, particularly for applications such as food packaging“Added Luterbacher. “And what makes plastic unique is the presence of the intact sugar structure. This makes it incredibly easy to make because you don’t have to change what nature offers you and simple to degrade because it can go back to a molecule that is already abundant in nature. “
The hope is that the substitutes for highly polluting plastics such as green plastic produced by scientists from the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), are the highway to give our planet Earth some respite, suffocated by tons of plastic. scattered, by land, sea and even in the celestial vault.
The first synthetic plastic, the bakelite, was produced in 1907, marking the beginning of the global plastics industry. However, the rapid growth of world plastic production was not realized until the 1950s. subsequently we witnessed a compulsive use of PET packaging, but it seems that a real awareness has only been taken in recent years.
Needless to say, but high-income countries are the largest producers of plastic. There is an attempt to stem the problem by producing plastic shopping bags derived from corn, a green plastic which, however, has not taken into account that corn is a food and part of the diet of various populations around the world. Those who suffered the backlash from this impoverishment were the low-income ones, thus creating a problem in a clumsy attempt to solve another.
What can we do then to make a contribution in this sense? Leave the green corn plastic in the crates and use the canvas shopping bags when you go shopping: sturdy, washable, ecological and can be reused indefinitely. Choosing, whenever possible, glass containers, especially as regards water, which can be reused by refilling them with drinking water, an Italy certainly does not lack supply sources. And of course, separate collection, so that other products, such as paper and cardboard, can also be recycled.
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