Abstract Scope |
Plastics are used every day, and are accumulating in landfills, soil, and water, and contribute to pollution. Companies have begun to focus on a circular economy, where the products they manufacture are recycled and feed back into the raw material chain for reuse in other products. While this strategy has its usefulness, it is limited in acknowledging that recycling facilities are not always available, consumer compliance is limited and subjective, and not all products are can be recycled because of the nature of their use. Here, we focus on superabsorbent polymers used in single-use consumer products where we improve the end-of-life environmental burden of products that degrade under non-specialized, environmental conditions within six months and do not create unstable intermediate molecules, including free radicals, but create nutrients for microorganisms. We report on our synthesis and characterization of SAPs as they meet the needs of the consumer and their end-of-life degradation. |