From a wider societal perspective, it is of utmost importance that materials synthesis is in harmony with environmental concerns, making use of renewable resources and supporting the circular economy. There is significant incentive to replace petrochemical building blocks, such as styrene frequently employed in thermoforming food and beverage packaging applications, with bio-based monomers derived from natural plants. The overall aim of this project is to prepare new materials suitable for thermoforming applications for food and beverage packaging based on copolymers and (co)polymer blends involving styrene and various sustainable (biomass) vinyl monomers. Overall, this project relates to the objective of transforming the current food and beverage packaging market from virgin plastics to sustainable materials by providing a new pathway to synthesis of sustainable food and beverage packaging materials from sustainable, renewable monomers (polymer building blocks) derived from biomass.
