Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have succeeded in synthesizing fumaric acid, a raw material for plastics, from CO2 powered by solar energy—for the first time. Typically, fumaric acid is synthesized from petroleum as a raw material to make polybutylene succinate, a biodegradable plastic, but this research shows that it can be synthesized from CO2 and biomass-derived…

Fathers exposed to chemicals in plastics can affect the metabolic health of their offspring for two generations, a University of California, Riverside, mouse study reports.

A team of University of Toronto Engineering researchers, led by Professor Kevin Golovin, have designed a solution to reduce the amount of microplastic fibres that are shed when clothes made of synthetic fabrics are washed. The team has created a two-layer coating made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) brushes, which are linear, single polymer chains grown from…