http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ma5008557

Ilker S. Bayer, Susana Guzman-Puyol, José Alejandro Heredia-Guerrero,
Luca Ceseracciu, Francesca Pignatelli, Roberta Ruffilli, Roberto
Cingolani, and Athanassia Athanassiou
Direct Transformation of Edible Vegetable Waste into Bioplastics
Macromolecules, 2014, 47 (15), pp 5135?5143
DOI: 10.1021/ma5008557

Abstract
Bioplastics with a wide range of mechanical properties were directly
obtained from industrially processed edible vegetable and cereal wastes.
As model systems, we present bioplastics synthesized from wastes of
parsley and spinach stems, rice hulls, and cocoa pod husks by digesting
in trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), casting, and evaporation. In this way,
amorphous cellulose-based plastics are formed. Moreover, many other
natural elements present in these plants are carried over into the
bioplastics rendering them with many exceptional thermo-physical
properties. Here, we show that, due to their broad compatibility with
cellulose, amorphous cellulose can be naturally plasticized with these
bioplastics by simply mixing during processing. Comparison of their
mechanical properties with that of various petroleum based synthetic
polymers indicates that these bioplastics have equivalent mechanical
properties to the nondegrading ones. This opens up possibilities for
replacing some of the nondegrading polymers with the present bioplastics
obtained from agro-waste.