ABSTRACT
The past couple of decades has seen major efforts to produce more commercial polymers based partially or entirely on renewable resources. The driving forces are both the eventual depletion of the petrochemical feedstock as the source for raw materials in polymer synthesis (Section 1.4) and environmental concerns. The plastic industry is often considered to have started in the 1860s with the plasticization of cellulose nitrate (a modied natural polymer) by camphor to allow the molding of simple objects. Regenerated cellulose in the 1900s and cellulose acetate in the 1920s essentially displaced the nitrate from all markets except lacquers and explosives. The recent strive in developing polymers from renewable resources is in some sense a return of the industry back toward its origin. This chapter covers two separate themes. The rst is natural polymers and polymer from renewable resources, and the second deals with the recycling and resource recovery of synthetic polymers.
