Research from Texas A&M and Teysha Technologies aims to reduce plastics pollution through the development of biodegradable polymers.
Imagine a plastic that’s as good for the environment as it is for business and personal convenience. It’s a dream with the potential to become reality, thanks to a recent sponsored research agreement between Texas A&M University and United Kingdom-based Teysha Technologies that brings together top international research scientists and elite process and commercialization experts dedicated to a common cause: developing unique intellectual property aimed at solving the world’s plastics pollution problem.
For the past decade, Texas A&M chemist Karen Wooley and her multidisciplinary research group within the Texas A&M Department of Chemistry have been working to perfect chemical approaches capable of changing the game where plastics and the related global glut — an estimate in excess of 10 million metric tons and growing — are concerned. They have succeeded in synthetically transforming sugars and other renewable bio-sourced feedstocks into sustainable polycarbonates that degrade in water to regenerate their natural building blocks and are customizable to fit a variety of applications.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, an enterprising group of technologically savvy industrialists with the scientific acumen to match had been searching the past few years for versatile bioplastics that could form the basis of a potential commercial foundation. The two teams eventually met and joined forces, resulting in Teysha Technologies, which licensed Texas A&M University System intellectual property surrounding the bioplastics technology.
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