Trends in Polyester Upcycling for Diversifying a Problematic Waste Stream

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.2c02054
• Publication Date: 2023-03-02T18:40:56Z
• Authors: Amruta Kulkarni; Greg Quintens; Louis M. Pitet
• Keywords: Plastic Waste

We are facing a rapidly growing plastic pollution crisis, which is adversely affecting communities and ecosystems across the globe. Polymer scientists have an urgent obligation to develop implement strategies for reutilizing waste streams instead of continually relying on virgin feedstocks in manufacturing. Postconsumer postindustrial items should be treated as valuable resources discarding them. In order do this, technological outlets must developed produce renewed materials using input. Polyesters represent one largest because they commonly used single-use beverage food containers well textiles. also ideal candidates exploit through chemical diversification, owing wide variety functional derivatives that can synthetically accessed via ester reactivity. This work highlights some recent developments related diversifying polyester waste, with focus poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) stream. The encompass production both small molecules prepared degradation PET high-performance polymeric scaffolds derived from reactions PET. Taking ingenuity into consideration, based these developments, outlook provided future streams. What next steps needed? Where trends headed? gaps still exist, particularly respect assessment sustainability life cycle analysis? Collectively considering examples highlighted here, there great promise field value-added materials.