Sustainability of Polymer Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Behind the word “plastic”, there are a multitude of polymers that we mainly encounter in everyday life such as in the high-tech areas. The extensive and unsustainable production and consumption of polymers produced from fossil origin has impacted the environment.

What makes a polymer sustainable? Simply, both the origin of the monomers that characterize it (if biobased) and the end-of-life management, which can make one polymer more sustainable than another. Probably, the best way to objectively assess the sustainability of some polymeric materials is Life Cycle Assessment analysis, which can highlight the real reduced environmental impact of products made with sustainable polymers compared to polymers from fossil sources. However, already knowing which new approaches and new technologies are currently available or under study helps to make these materials more sustainable.

Polymer science represents a domain of great interest due to the possible applications of polymers, but polymer industries and research teams are facing a scenario of epochal change in demand: not only for the synthesis and production of new polymers but, above all, for making the conventional polymers, used up to now, environmentally friendly.

This Special Issue aims to explore and report:

• The recovery and reuse technologies of valuable polymer materials to improve resource utilization and reduce environmental pollution;
• How to make a polymeric material more sustainable;
• Where and how to replace a conventional polymer with a biobased one;
• Strategies to improve production processes;
• Green industrial processes and new syntheses to produce polymers;
• Sustainable composites based on polymer materials;
• Biopolymers;
• Renewable feedstock;
• Economics of sustainability;
• Materials design and manufacturing (eco-design);
• LCA application;
• How to accelerate polymer degradation;
• Structure vs mechanical and chemical properties;
• Environmental impact and polymer degradation in the environment;
• Economic impacts of polymer waste diffusion in the environment.

Prof. Dr. Loris Pietrelli
Dr. Iolanda Francolini
Dr. Antonella Piozzi
Guest Editors

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