Waste biomass is made into new PET plastic, which can be used for food packaging, easy to degrade and easy to manufacture

Moving away from fossil fuels and avoiding the buildup of plastic in the environment is key to tackling the challenge of climate chan.

Traditional plastics are so widespread because they combine many advantages such as low cost, thermal stability, mechanical strength, processability and compatibili.

"We're basically just 'cooking' wood or other inedible plant material, such as agricultural waste, with cheap chemicals to produce plastic precursors in one step," Luterbach sa.

The technique is based on a 2016 discovery by Luterbach and colleagues that adding an aldehyde stabilizes parts of the plant material and avoids damaging them during extracti.

"By using a different aldehyde - glyoxylic acid instead of formaldehyde - we can simply sandwich the sugar molecule with a 'sticky' group, so that They act as the building blocks of plast.

The versatile properties of new plastics allow them to be used in a variety of applications such as packaging, textiles, medicine, electronics, and mo.

"This plastic has very exciting properties, especially in applications like food packagi.