Petroleum-based plastics are notorious for wreaking havoc on our ecosystems due to their chemical toxicity and slow degradation rate. Plastic products manufactured out of crude oil are unsustainable, with limited abundance of natural resources and at present, a lack of efficient recycling approaches that would facilitate a circular economy. An environmentally-friendly approach to minimize plastic accumulation is via the manufacturing of sustainable biomaterials. Polysaccharides represent a major class of sustainable biomaterials actively sourced from plants, bacteria, and animals. Pectic acid is an abundant polysaccharide currently found in food industry waste products including the peels of citrus fruits and apple pomace. Through a one-step amidation, we modified pectic acid with various amine-containing small molecules to generate amidated pectic acid derivatives that exhibited unique material properties. One such emergent property for some of the amidated pectic acids was an enhanced ability to withstand compressive forces and exhibit shape memory, similar to polystyrene-based packaging peanuts. These glycomaterials readily solubilize in aqueous solutions and due to their labile glycosidic bonds likely biodegrade into non-toxic by-products. Semi-synthetic glycomaterials offer opportunities to replace traditional plastics while retaining their characteristic properties. We imagine that these amidated pectic acid glycomaterials will advance the design and implementation of bioplastics to mitigate plastics accumulation in our environment.

Amidated pectic acid as a biodegradable glycomaterial-based plastic

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