Work

Zero-Waste Upcycling of Potato Peels via Direct PLA Grafting for Rapidly Biodegradable Bioplastics

Year: 2026

Type: preprint

Abstract: The escalating global demand for petrochemical plastic packaging has driven a severe environmental crisis due to its inherent resistance to degradation and challenging recycling processes. While upcycling agro-industrial side streams into bioplastics offers an attractive solution, traditional physical blending fails to meet practical packaging requirements due to severe interfacial incompatibility and phase separation. Here we report a scalable, solvent-free surface-initiated ring-opening polymerization (SI-ROP) strategy that directly bridges sustainable agriculture with high-performance degradable packaging. By utilizing minimally treated macroscopic biomass, ubiquitous potato peel waste, and chemically consuming lignocellulosic surface hydroxyls to form permanent ester linkages, we construct a entangled topological network that fundamentally overcomes interfacial limitations. This highly integrated architecture delivers the exceptional mechanical robustness, near-complete UVA/UVB shielding, and competitive gas impermeability required for demanding packaging applications. Furthermore, metagenomic and enzymatic profiling reveals that these packaging materials undergo accelerated, microbially driven mineralization in soil via a synergistic dual-degradation mechanism involving secreted carbohydrate esterases and glycoside hydrolases. By seamlessly transforming agricultural waste into materials designed for complete mineralization, this solvent-free engineering paradigm provides a promising route to unite sustainable agriculture with next-generation packaging in a closed-loop bioeconomy.

Source: ChemRxiv

DOI: 10.26434/chemrxiv.15008075/v1