Plastic is an incredibly useful and versatile material, but it’s also become a plague to the earth because of the large amount of disposable plastics thrown away every day that wind up in landfills and our oceans. On top of that, it’s made from petroleum, a fossil fuel, which adds to its environmental impact. More environmentally-friendly plastics have been made like those made from corn or sugar cane, but they often are still made with some crude oil derivatives. A new discovery from the University of Bath has shown that a waste product from pine trees could lead to a fully renewable plastic that is free from fossil fuels. Pinene is the chemical that makes pine trees smell like, well, pine trees and it also happens to be a waste product of the paper industry.
Chemical that gives pine trees their smell could be used to make renewable plastic
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