Plastics and other polymeric materials have become indispensable in modern society. However, their large-scale manufacturing and consumption pose critical sustainability challenges, including the depletion of non-renewable feedstocks and the generation of hard-to-recycle waste, with consequent environmental impacts. To address these challenges, solutions should be explored across the full lifecycle. These include utilizing renewable or recyclable feedstocks such as biomass and CO2; developing adaptive recycling and upcycling technologies for various existing polymer materials; and designing and synthesizing new polymer materials that facilitate recyclability; for disposable/single-use polymer products, which are a major source of plastic pollution, the focus should be placed on developing repeatedly chemically-recyclable biodegradable polymers that enable closed-loop monomer recycling via depolymerization, while also undergoing environmental degradation under uncontrolled disposal scenarios.
