{"id":169153,"date":"2025-10-20T07:26:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T05:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=169153"},"modified":"2025-10-14T13:54:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T11:54:51","slug":"bamboo-based-plastic-can-be-made-to-biodegrade-quickly-but-hold-up-in-tough-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/bamboo-based-plastic-can-be-made-to-biodegrade-quickly-but-hold-up-in-tough-conditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Bamboo-based plastic can be made to biodegrade quickly, but hold up in tough conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

A new method to produce strong, biodegradable plastic from bamboo is reported in\u00a0Nature Communications<\/em><\/a>\u00a0this week. The bioplastic resembles oil-based plastics in strength,\u00a0shapeability,\u00a0and thermal stability but can biodegrade in soil within 50 days,\u00a0presenting a new pathway towards sustainable plastic alternatives.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"The
The team’s bamboo molecular plastic can be produced in large sheets, and formed into shapes as needed. Image courtesy of the researchers<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Plastics made from organic biomass (such as bamboo composite plastics) have shown promise in replacing traditional oil-based plastics. However, widespread adoption has been limited by their inferior mechanical properties, meaning they are unable to be used in demanding applications such as infrastructure. Additionally, bamboo composite plastics are typically composed of bamboo fibres immersed in a plastic or resin, and thus cannot be completely degraded, undermining efforts to find truly sustainable solutions to oil-based plastics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\nThis
This new bamboo molecular plastic is not only as strong and durable as traditional plastics, but also degrades in soil in just 50 days Image courtesy of the researchers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Haipeng\u00a0Yu,\u00a0Dawei Zhao,\u00a0and colleagues describe a non-toxic, alcohol solvent-based method to dissolve bamboo cellulose\u00a0down to a molecular level, then direct the cellulose molecules to reassemble and organise into a tough plastic material. During dissolution, the cellulose is chemically\u00a0modified\u00a0to aid the formation of a strong\u00a0molecular network\u00a0upon regeneration.\u00a0The bamboo plastic was tested against several types of widely used commercial plastics (such as\u00a0polylactic acid\u00a0and high impact polystyrene) with the bamboo plastic displaying\u00a0a\u00a0tensile strength\u00a0of\u00a0110 megapascals (a unit of pressure) and work of fracture (the force required to fracture a material)\u00a0of\u00a080 kJ m-3<\/sup>, surpassing the\u00a0traditional plastics\u00a0and existing bioplastics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bamboo plastic also matched or outperformed traditional plastics in tests of mechanical\u00a0and\u00a0thermal stability,\u00a0and\u00a0shapeability,\u00a0presenting\u00a0it as\u00a0a\u00a0viable\u00a0alternative for use in industry. Additionally, the bamboo plastic can be degraded in soil within 50 days or\u00a0closed-loop\u00a0recycled (where objects are recycled and used to remake\u00a0similar products) whilst\u00a0retaining\u00a090% of its original strength,\u00a0demonstrating\u00a0its potential as\u00a0a\u00a0sustainable but high performing alternative to traditional plastic materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Research paper<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"a
a<\/strong>\u00a0Histogram of global plastic production, use, and waste from 2007 to 2060. The bottom left illustrates the deficiencies associated with plastic waste, while the bottom right outlines the aspects in which current bioplastics require enhancement.\u00a0b<\/strong>\u00a0Schematic diagram of molecular shaping design for the construction of BM-plastic through DES treatment and ethanol molecular stimulation. Each element of Schematic diagram was conceived by the authors of this work and drawn using Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 and 3ds Max 2018 software.\u00a0c<\/strong>\u00a0Radar plot of BM-plastic and commercial plastic (HDPE, PLA, ABS and PMMA).\u00a0d<\/strong>\u00a0Demonstration of the large-scale preparation of BM-plastic.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new method to produce strong, biodegradable plastic from bamboo is reported in\u00a0Nature Communications\u00a0this week. The bioplastic resembles oil-based plastics in strength,\u00a0shapeability,\u00a0and thermal stability but can biodegrade in soil within 50 days,\u00a0presenting a new pathway towards sustainable plastic alternatives. Plastics made from organic biomass (such as bamboo composite plastics) have shown promise in replacing traditional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":169177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Material science: Biodegradable bamboo plastic as strong as regular plastic","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[27049,5842,5935],"supplier":[27050],"class_list":["post-169153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biodegradablity","tag-biomass","tag-bioplastic","supplier-northeast-forestry-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169153"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=169153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}