ACS CCC:

Transformative Natural Polymers
for the 21^st Century Materials 

We are currently grappling with the environmental pollution caused by plastic waste. It is imperative that we discover new materials for the 21st century to minimize the plastic waste produced, especially in areas of single-use applications, such as the packaging, agricultural film, as well as the disposable consumer goods, etc. However, we also need to realize that the plastics have revolutionized material innovations and their commercial manufacturing in the 20th century lead to the mass production of all kinds of merchandise that are more accessible and affordable for average consumers and have completely changed the way we live, therefore, finding a plastic alternative material is an arduous task.

Natural polymers provide a sustainable solution to the plastic problem. These materials, which include cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, starch, chitin, proteins, etc., are abundantly available to meet our material needs. These materials are naturally circular within the carbon loop and their production, whether occurred in nature, or chemically/biologically produced under controlled manufacturing processes, sequesters CO₂, and its end-of-life degradation products generally do not pollute the environment.

The challenge to the broad adoption of natural polymers for consumer applications is, however, the limited cost-effective processes that are available to produce high performance materials. Since the discovery of Parkesine, Celluloid and Bakelite, the so called early man-made synthetic plastics, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, huge amount of research efforts and commercialization ventures have been invested and focused on the synthetic plastics, especially those from fossil fuels. Natural polymers were severely under-explored. Now the time to go “back to the future” might come, with the accumulated knowledge to fundamentally understand the relationship between polymer structure and its property, as well as the experience gained from the scale-up practice in building up the complete plastic industry from scratch, – the successful story of plastics – we are now in a much better position than two centuries ago to develop and commercialize the natural polymers, a category of materials that have a better end-of-life situation than plastics, and bring minimal negative impact to the environment.

Here, a multidisciplinary collaboration among different ACS divisions is initiated to form a convergent chemistry community, which we call it ACS-NP-CCC, to develop the cost effective and sustainable solutions sustainable materials. ACS-NP-CCC is represented by the following ACS Divisions:

• POLY and PMSE divisions: focusing on polymer chemistry and material science with respect to its development and industrialization.
• AGFD Division: providing technical expertise on agricultural plants science
• CARB Division: providing carbohydrates-specific insights and technologies
• ENVR Division: providing design guidance towards environmentally friendly materials