According to a recent report by the UK Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP), more than 4.9 million tonnes of paper and card packaging were generated in the UK in 2017. Despite the effective collection and recycling systems in place, more than 1 million tonnes of post-consumer paper and card packaging ended up as municipal solid waste (MSW), with the intention that it should be landfilled or incinerated. As things now stand, to move towards a circular economy model, the UK government has set a target that requires 65 % MSW to be recycled by 2035. Achieving the target is a challenging task, so increasing the use of waste as raw materials is crucial.<br/><br/>In our work, we demonstrated a simple and scalable way to utilise recovered cellulose fibres from MSW as reinforcement in biobased poly(lactic) (PLA) composites. Fibres networks were produced by bleaching and refining the recovered pulp fibres, followed by vacuum filtration and heat consolidation in a hot-press. PLA composites containing up to 35 wt.-% pulp fibres were produced by stacking the fibres networks and PLA thin films together in a compression mould. The flexural modulus of the composites reinforced with the recovered pulp fibres showed ~ 70 % improvement over the unreinforced PLA without sacrificing the flexural strength of neat PLA. The moisture resistance and the life-cycle assessment of the recovered fibres-reinforced composites will also be discussed in the presentation.

Utilising recovered cellulose fibres from municipal solid waste as reinforcement in poly(lactic acid)-biobased composites

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.