The plastic waste crisis is catalysing change across the sector and with it, we should anticipate high volumes of bio-based and 'biodegradable' waste streams in the future. However, plastic upcycling technologies to date largely focus on degradation and upcycling of petrochemical-derived plastics.

In this talk, Joanna will turn our attention to the 'next-generation' of plastic waste, and will demonstrate two examples of converting bio-based polymers poly(lactic acid) and poly(hydroxybutyrate) into useful industrial chemicals such as acetone, protocatechuate and vanillin, via engineered microbial metabolism. This work demonstrates a fully circular and sustainable lifecycle for this emerging class of materials and shows that we should be thinking 'beyond biodegradable' to fully exploit the circular potential of next-generation plastics.

We’re excited to host Dr @Joanna Sadler from the @University of Edinburgh School of Biological Sciences

Read the publication: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.4c00357