Division/Committee: [POLY] Division of Polymer Chemistry

Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues. What are the measures to fix this problem In addition to recycling plastics and making plastics biobased/biodegradable, a new trend is emerging - to promote the use of natural polymers. Natural polymers, whose backbone structures are created by nature, are able to degrade in the environment and do not negatively impact the environment. Meanwhile, natural polymers emit a minimum amount of green-house gas in their life cycle. Simply put, similar to that the biopolymers cover both biobased and biodegradable polymers, natural polymers are either nature-based or naturally degradable polymers. In addition, if they are collected, natural polymers can also be recycled, for instance, the paper. Natural polymers, either extracted and used in their original formats, produced through an synthetic process (e.g. bioengineering), or mildly chemically modified but maintaining their natural backbones, possess a closed carbon loop and therefore offer an alternative type of material to complement the plastics. We encourage the innovators from both the industry and academia to submit their work to this symposium and showcase the successes or the potentials of learning from Nature to address plastic pollution. The scope of the work includes, but not limited to: - Paper Packaging and its barrier coatings - Dissolvable natural polymer packaging forms - Carbon negative materials - Material bio-engineering technologies to produce natural polymers, e.g. PHAs - Synthetic biology - Natural/enzymatic degradation of polymers

Qiong Yuan

Chemical Abstracts Service

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