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from the pineing-for-more-environmentally-friendly-ways dept.
Most current plastics are made from oil, which is unsustainable. However, scientists from the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath have developed a renewable plastic from a chemical called pinene found in pine needles.
Pinene is the fragrant chemical from the terpene family that gives pine trees their distinctive "Christmas smell" and is a waste product from the paper industry.
The researchers hope the plastic could be used in a range of applications, including food packaging, plastic bags and even medical implants.
Degradable polyesters such as PLA (polylactic acid) are made from crops such as corn or sugar cane, but PLA can be mixed with a rubbery polymer called caprolactone to make it more flexible. Caprolactone is made from crude oil, and so the resulting plastic isn't totally renewable.
The researchers publishing their results in the journal Polymer Chemistry, used pinene as the raw material to make a new type of plastic that can be used in the place of caprolactone.
Helena Quilter, PhD student at the CSCT, explained: "We're not talking about recycling old Christmas trees into plastics, but rather using a waste product from industry that would otherwise be thrown away, and turning it into something useful.
Christmas trees aren't plastic already?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @09:16PM
In Modern Russia, Putin Makes Plastic from Both Christmas Trees and Scientists