New collaboration explores new approaches to the development of bio-plastics
In an inter-institute collaboration RASEI Fellow Merritt Turetsky teams up with Carson Bruns from ATLAS to explore a productive way to deal with the plastic waste problem. Awarded a ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ 2025 Research & Innovation Seed Grant, the team are excited to get started!
Plastics are a huge problem. Plastic waste can now be found at the bottom of the deepest ocean and on top of the tallest mountains, and the environmental and health impacts are only starting to be understood. In 2024 the world generated an estimated 240 million tons of plastic waste, of which less than 10% was recycled, the rest going to landfill, or worse, polluting the environment. That is the equivalent of 50 million elephants.
One of the key reasons for the difficulty in recycling plastics is that they are made from petroleum and don’t easily breakdown in nature. Plastics can be made from bio-based feedstocks, but adoption has been slow. There are a number of reasons for this, including low stability, cost, and ability to compost. This research from the Bruns and Turretsky team aims to change that. This work, that will be primarily based in Bruns’ Emergent Nanotechnology Lab will be focused on turning agricultural materials into bio-based plastics that are strong enough for their applications, but can be readily recycled, more easily composted, or even used as a fertilizer.
The Turetsky lab specializes in exploring and understanding ecosystems, in particular northern ecosystems, looking at permafrost degradation and how this impacts the environment and communities. What is her team doing investigating polymers? They are more at home looking at boglands and moss!
One of the hurdles in figuring out how well a bio-plastic degrades is getting good conditions for composting. It is hard to characterize the biodegradability of the bio-plastics under accurate conditions. That is where the Turetsky lab plugs in to this project. Working with the Bruns team the Turetsky group are developing systems to more accurately investigate and characterize the biodegradability of the new bio-plastics being developed.
Excited to see the results of this developing collaboration!ÌýÌý