Uploaded April 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Single-use hard plastics are all around us: utensils, party decorations and food containers, to name a few examples. These items pile up in landfills, and many biodegradable versions stick around for months, requiring industrial composting systems to fully degrade. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering have created a sturdy, lightweight material that disintegrates on-demand — and they made it from sugar and wood-derived powders.
“Amorphous Sugar Materials as Sustainable and Scalable Alternatives for Rigid, Short-Term-Use Products” - Scott T. Phillips, Ph.D. (corresponding author)
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c06981
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Headline Science:
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Ingenious:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLG7h7fPoH8IjxpWPKu5L1acNYO5T070P
ACS Fall 2022 Media Briefings - Archived:
acs.org/acsfall2022briefings
Chemical & Engineering News
youtube.com/channel/UCB_zuUSmh_PVkqwkaDT-thA
Produced by the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. ACS is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences.
Join the American Chemical Society! bit.ly/Join_ACS
Single-use hard plastics are all around us: utensils, party decorations and food containers, to name a few examples. These items pile up in landfills, and many biodegradable versions stick around for months, requiring industrial composting systems to fully degrade. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering have created a sturdy, lightweight material that disintegrates on-demand — and they made it from sugar and wood-derived powders.
“Amorphous Sugar Materials as Sustainable and Scalable Alternatives for Rigid, Short-Term-Use Products” - Scott T. Phillips, Ph.D. (corresponding author)
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c06981
You might also like:
Headline Science:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLG7h7fPoH8JRH8bEJdgnwZnyA5N-9UaE
Ingenious:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLG7h7fPoH8IjxpWPKu5L1acNYO5T070P
ACS Fall 2022 Media Briefings - Archived:
acs.org/acsfall2022briefings
Chemical & Engineering News
youtube.com/channel/UCB_zuUSmh_PVkqwkaDT-thA
Produced by the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. ACS is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences.
Join the American Chemical Society! bit.ly/Join_ACS
