Biodegradable plastics might seem an obvious solution to the plastic waste problem, but their current form lags behind fossil-based polymers in required properties. Sometimes they don’t even biodegrade that well. New research is trying to find a solution.

“Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which plastic water bottles are made of, is a remarkable polymer,” says Professor Alex Conradie, who leads the Sustainable Process Technologies research group at the University of Nottingham. “It has very useful properties and given decades of process optimisation invested into PET manufacturing, it’s also very cost effective. It is a tall order to match the properties of such a versatile material.”

PET is made from oil; the material which scientists hope will one day replace it in its multitude of applications should be made from something else. If thrown into the ocean, PET will stay floating around almost forever – its replacement should decompose into innocuous chemical compounds such as water and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period so that whales, dolphins and other sea creatures don’t ingest it. https://www.scitechnol.com/biochemical-bioprocess-engineering-journal.php