Description
With increasing public awareness of climate change, environmental pollution, and earth’s declining resources, sustainability and green chemistry have become hot topics these days. In 2015, the United Nations adopted 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be achieved in 2030. As polymers are being used all around us, they play a major role in the achievement of these goals. In this article, an overview is provided of selected polymer research areas that are related to sustainability. For our purposes, these can be grouped into three categories: 1) Approaches that can reduce or replace polymer waste, such as use of agro-based materials, recycling of polymer waste, design of more easily degradable or recyclable polymers, and minimization of polymer use; 2) Improved polymer processes that entail reduced cost and energy, atom economy, reaction efficiency, and toxicity reduction; 3) Use and design of polymers that can facilitate the achievement of other SDGs. Examples of these approaches can be seen from the chapters of this book. In view of the active and continuing interest in this field, we can expect to see continued R&D and commercial activities relating to these approaches in the future.