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The first
reports of its impact on the environment date back more than half a
century. In the food industry alone, flexible packaging is one of the
largest and fastest-growing segments, generating 14.5 million tons of
plastic waste in 2018 (approximately 5% of the municipal solid waste
generated in that year). This waste is a major environmental problem,
as it can take hundreds of years to decompose. Therefore, it is
essential to develop industrially scalable, sustainable, and
biodegradable alternative materials for everyday use. Adhesives and
coating materials for the food industry could be the most impactful
targets. We report, for the first time, the development of
guayule-based sustainable and biodegradable polymeric alternatives
that possess similar or comparable properties to those made of
oil-based polymer materials. Guayule latex/resin, and/or their
respective epoxides, vegetable oil epoxide, spent coffee oil epoxide,
and linkers such as furan dicarboxylic acid (prepared from atmospheric
carbon dioxide and biomass from plants), glycerol, biobased
tackifiers, and lecithin were used to produce biodegradable and
sustainable: 1) hotmelt adhesive with immediate tack, using a
bio-based tackifier, 2) coating material of variable thickness
compatible with flexible packaging materials, 3) glassy polymeric
material with high thermal stability and mechanical strength, 4)
vegetable oil-based soft polymeric material potentially usable in
medical and tissue research, using ingredients produced locally. These
results hold promise for industrial scalability. |