Isn’t it fantastic, recycling plastic? The Barbie Girl song reminds us, “Imagination, life is your creation” and we couldn’t agree more especially with all the recent bioplastic and plastic recycling news. Like Braskem’s news that they are expanding their post-consumer resin portfolio and investing $67 million in the construction of a recycling line with capacity […]
What does plastic have to do with the bioeconomy? Well, everything. It’s about taking plastic waste, breaking it down into building blocks and converting it into a valuable treasure and it’s about creating biobased plastics. News from the U.S. Department of Energy on their $27 million in funding for plastics recycling and new biobased plastics […]
In Germany, natural fiber-reinforced plastics (NFRP) become more resilient when the natural fibers are encased in a special coating. This has been determined by researchers at the Fraunhofer WKI. Through the application of a resin layer and pressing to form a composite material, the NFRP exhibit improved mechanical, thermal and hygric properties and greater chemical […]
In Australia, chemical engineers from UNSW Sydney have developed new technology that helps convert harmful carbon dioxide emissions into chemical building blocks to make useful industrial products like fuel and plastics. And if adopted on a large scale, the process could give the world breathing space as it transitions towards a green economy. The researchers, […]
In New York, breaking news arrived that Anellotech is significantly expanding its program with Plas-TCat, a new process technology aiming to convert a wide range of plastic waste directly into chemicals – which can then be used to make new, virgin plastics. 95% of plastic packaging material is annually lost to the economy after a […]
Cielo – it means “sky” in Spanish but some also use the word Cielo to refer to Heaven, bringing with it images of stunning white puffy clouds filled with clean air and hope. So it’s an appropriate name for Cielo Waste Solutions. After all they are taking trash and converting it into something valuable – […]
In Colorado, CU Boulder researchers have developed nanobio-hybrid organisms capable of using airborne carbon dioxide and nitrogen to produce a variety of plastics and fuels, a promising first step toward low-cost carbon sequestration and eco-friendly manufacturing for chemicals. By using light-activated quantum dots to fire particular enzymes within microbial cells, the researchers were able to […]
In Colorado, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have discovered a method of plastics upcycling—transforming discarded products into new, high-value materials of better quality and environmental value—that could economically incentivize the recycling of waste plastics and help solve one of the world’s most looming pollution problems. Published in Joule, […]
In the UK, scientists have engineered an enzyme which can digest some of our most commonly polluting plastics, providing a potential solution to one of the world’s biggest environmental problems. The discovery could result in a recycling solution for millions of tons of plastic bottles, made of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which currently persists for […]
Recently, Nexant principal Ron Cascone joined us for a March Madness webinar on the horizons for Biobased Plastics. Here below are his illuminating slides presented on the day.
Iowa –
