Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Harnessing CO₂ for the Development of Biodegradable Polymers: A Review of Innovations in Green Chemistry

This review covers recent advances in making biodegradable polymers from captured CO2, an approach that simultaneously reduces greenhouse gas emissions and creates plastic alternatives that break down more readily than conventional plastics. The authors survey catalyst development, polymerization methods, and material properties of CO2-derived polymers like polycarbonates and polyurethanes. While not about existing microplastic pollution, replacing conventional plastics with CO2-based biodegradable materials could reduce both carbon emissions and long-term microplastic accumulation in the environment.

2025 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Bio-based plastics – a sustainable solution to plastic pollution

This review outlines the production, properties, and sustainability potential of bio-based plastics derived from renewable or recycled raw materials, arguing they can form part of a circular economy with lower carbon footprints than conventional petroleum-based plastics.

2025 Microbiology Australia 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Bio-based plastics in a circular economy: A review of recovery pathways and implications for product design

Researchers reviewed how bio-based plastics — made from renewable plant sources — can be recovered and recycled at end-of-life, finding that the feasibility of eight different recovery methods depends heavily not just on plastic chemistry but on how products are designed, and offering guidance for designers to improve recyclability.

2023 Resources Conservation and Recycling 34 citations
Article Tier 2

Designing biodegradable alternatives to commodity polymers

This review examined the challenges and strategies for designing biodegradable alternatives to commodity polymers, acknowledging that while replacement is necessary, sustainable alternatives must match the performance and economics of conventional plastics.

2023 Chemical Society Reviews 33 citations
Article Tier 2

Methodology to address potential impacts of plastic emissions in life cycle assessment

Researchers proposed a new method for including the environmental impact of plastic emissions in life cycle assessments, which currently tend to make plastic products appear less harmful than alternatives. The approach introduces characterization factors based on how long different plastics persist in the environment. The study suggests that accounting for plastic pollution in these assessments could significantly change how the environmental footprint of plastic products is evaluated.

2022 The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 86 citations
Article Tier 2

Green Chemistry Principles In Biopolymer Synthesis

This review synthesises green chemistry strategies applied to biopolymer synthesis — including renewable feedstocks, benign solvents, enzyme catalysis, and energy-efficient processes — evaluating how biopolymers derived from natural or biological sources can serve as sustainable alternatives to conventional fossil-based plastics.

2025 American Journal Of Applied Science And Technology
Article Tier 2

Bioplastics as Better Alternative to Petroplastics and Their Role in National Sustainability: A Review

This review examines bioplastics as a more environmentally sustainable alternative to petroleum-based plastics, discussing their advantages including lower carbon footprint and biodegradability, while noting that higher production costs currently limit their ability to compete with conventional plastics.

2017 Advances in Bioscience and Bioengineering 118 citations
Article Tier 2

Redesigning Carbon–Carbon Backbone Polymers for Biodegradability–Compostability at the End-of-Life Stage

This review discusses strategies for redesigning carbon-carbon backbone polymers, which comprise 77% of global plastics, to be biodegradable and compostable at end-of-life, addressing the persistent microplastic pollution problem caused by conventional non-biodegradable plastics.

2023 Molecules 7 citations
Article Tier 2

The future of plastic

Researchers examine whether biodegradable polymers can solve plastic's environmental crisis, noting that while plastic is enormously useful, society's heavy reliance on it has created a global pollution problem that biodegradable alternatives alone are unlikely to fully resolve.

2018 Nature Communications 108 citations
Article Tier 2

Minimizing the environmental impacts of plastic through eco-design

Researchers developed a sustainability metric for eco-designing plastic products with low environmental persistence by integrating the environmental degradation rate of plastics into established material selection frameworks. The approach allows designers to compare materials on both functional performance and environmental persistence using material property indices.

2023 4 citations
Article Tier 2

Innovations in applications and prospects of bioplastics and biopolymers: a review

Researchers reviewed the chemistry, applications, and market outlook for bioplastic polymers including PHA, PLA, and cellulose-based materials, finding they offer meaningful environmental advantages over petroleum plastics but require further economic and performance optimization before achieving widespread commercial adoption.

2021 Environmental Chemistry Letters 421 citations
Article Tier 2

Biodegradable Polymers: The Future of Sustainable Plastic Alternatives

This review examines biodegradable polymers as sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based plastics, evaluating their potential to reduce microplastic pollution and ecological degradation. The authors assess the performance, environmental fate, and scalability of current biodegradable materials, identifying key challenges for widespread adoption across packaging and consumer product applications.

2025 Scriptora International Journal of Research and Innovation (SIJRI)
Article Tier 2

Pathways to sustainable plastics. Unlocking opportunities in biobased plastic

This report examines pathways toward sustainable plastics production, finding that manufacturing new plastic from recycled content is the preferred circular economy route and that biobased feedstocks from biomass, recycled plastics, and CO2 can enable a transition away from fossil-based polymer production.

2025 TNO Repository
Article Tier 2

Strategic selection tool for thermoplastic materials in a renewable circular economy: Identifying future circular polymers

Researchers developed a strategic material selection tool to guide the transition toward a renewable circular economy for thermoplastics, helping identify which polymers can meet performance requirements while being decoupled from fossil feedstocks and compatible with biodegradation or closed-loop recycling.

2023 Sustainable Production and Consumption 14 citations
Article Tier 2

Towards a Circular Economy of Plastics: An Evaluation of the Systematic Transition to a New Generation of Bioplastics

This review evaluates the transition from petroleum-based plastics to bioplastics within a circular economy framework, assessing the sustainability, production challenges, and environmental trade-offs of current bioplastic alternatives.

2022 Polymers 87 citations
Article Tier 2

Bioplastic from Renewable Biomass: A Facile Solution for a Greener Environment

Researchers reviewed the science and applications of bioplastics — plastics made from renewable biological sources like starch, proteins, and algae — as a lower-impact alternative to conventional petroleum-based plastics that shed microplastics and persist in the environment. Bioplastics can match many properties of traditional plastics while offering biodegradability and a smaller carbon footprint, with especially promising uses in food packaging, agriculture, and medicine.

2021 Earth Systems and Environment 328 citations
Article Tier 2

Sustainable Plastics with High Performance and Convenient Processibility

Researchers developed a new approach to creating sustainable plastics by combining bio-derived polymers with petroleum-based monomers through in situ polymerization. The resulting materials showed strong mechanical properties, good processability, and improved environmental degradability compared to conventional plastics. The study offers a potential pathway toward reducing microplastic pollution by designing plastics that break down more readily after disposal.

2024 Advanced Science 13 citations
Article Tier 2

Bio-Based Materials for Packaging

This review evaluates bio-based materials as sustainable alternatives for plastic packaging, examining the environmental performance, mechanical properties, and commercial viability of biopolymers in addressing the global plastic pollution crisis.

2022 International Journal of Molecular Sciences 30 citations
Article Tier 2

Circularity in polymers: addressing performance and sustainability challenges using dynamic covalent chemistries

Researchers reviewed how dynamic covalent chemistry can be applied to polymeric materials to enable closed-loop recyclability, addressing the waste accumulation caused by current plastics. The study examines how reversible chemical bonds can be tailored for specific reprocessing conditions and evaluates the potential economic and environmental impacts of these recyclable polymer systems.

2023 Chemical Science 92 citations
Article Tier 2

Recycling of Plastics as a Strategy to Reduce Life Cycle GHG Emission, Microplastics and Resource Depletion

This study quantified the environmental benefits of recycling widely consumed plastic polymers, demonstrating that increased plastic recycling significantly reduces life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, microplastic pollution, and resource depletion.

2023 Sustainability 38 citations
Review Tier 2

A critical review on plastic waste life cycle assessment and management: Challenges, research gaps, and future perspectives

This review examines the full environmental impact of plastics from production through disposal, noting that life cycle assessments often produce unexpected results when comparing bio-based and petroleum-based plastics. A major gap exists because microplastic pollution is not yet factored into these environmental assessments, despite growing evidence of its ecological harm.

2024 Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 137 citations
Article Tier 2

Recent Advances in Sustainable Plastic Upcycling and Biopolymers

This review argues that sustainable biopolymers, produced from renewable resources via biological or hybrid chemical-biological processes, represent the most promising long-term solution to the plastic pollution crisis and climate-related concerns about fossil-fuel-derived plastics. Key challenges include achieving the mechanical properties, production costs, and large-scale manufacturing needed to replace conventional plastics.

2020 Biotechnology Journal 142 citations
Article Tier 2

Algal Bioplastics: a Review

This review examines algae as a sustainable feedstock for bioplastic production, covering production methods and applications as an eco-friendly alternative to conventional petroleum-based plastics. Researchers highlight that algal bioplastics offer biodegradability and reduced carbon emissions, addressing the ecological harms caused by conventional plastic accumulation in marine and terrestrial environments.

2022 YMER Digital 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Attributional and consequential life cycle perspectives of second-generation polylactic acid: The benefits of integrating a recycling strategy

Researchers used life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental feasibility of second-generation polylactic acid (PLA) production from wheat straw, comparing attributional and consequential perspectives and assessing the role of chemical recycling on environmental performance. The study found that integrating a recycling strategy improved the environmental profile of the bio-based bioplastic.

2023 Journal of Cleaner Production 19 citations