Scientists Succeed in Making PLA Material More Degradable

According to a press release, researchers at the University of Bath have succeeded in making PLA even more degradable. Essentially, they have found that by incorporating sugar units into the polymers, they can be degraded more easily when exposed to UV light. The project comes as increasingly companies are working on making plastics more recyclable or degradable to reduce waste globally, a topic which has also been popular within the 3D printing community in recent years.

You have almost certainly have already heard of PLA or polylactic acid. It is a material produced using lactic acid from the fermentation of sugar. Due to its natural roots, it is often touted as the renewable, more sustainable alternative to plastics made from crude oil products, and its range of applications is very diverse, especially when it comes to 3D printing. However, the material is often mislabeled as biodegradable. In fact, this is only partially true. While it can degrade in industrial composting conditions with high temperatures and humidity, it has limited degradation in natural environments, such as soil or seawater. Royal University Society research fellow and polymer chemistry lecturer Dr. Antoine Buchard commented on this noting, “Lots of plastics are labelled as biodegradable, but unfortunately this is only true if you dispose of it in an industrial waste composter – if put into domestic compost heaps, it can last for years.”

The University of Bath hopes the project will make plastics more degradable at the end of their life (photo credits: oilslo)

What is different about the newly developed material?

However, now there seems to be a solution. Scientists at the Center for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath have now found a way to make PLA material degradable even under natural conditions. This is achieved by incorporating different amounts of sugar molecules into the polymer. Commenting on the process, Antoine Buchard noted that the addition of sugar breaks the plastic into smaller polymer chains which are more sensitive to hydrolysis. This in turn will make PLA more biodegradable in nature such as in the ocean or a regular garden compost heap.