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Abstract
The end-of-life fate for plastic waste has become a major social, economic, and environmental problem that requires widespread changes to fix. One avenue for addressing the increase in plastic waste is to produce materials that are compostable, and therefore, biodegrade at the end of their useful life. One hurdle to synthetically producing novel compostable materials is the difficulty in measuring compostability throughout the new product pipeline. To address this issue, a high-throughput enzymatic degradation assay was developed as a guiding tool for the synthesis of industrially compostable polyurethanes. The assay was applied to the screening of aliphatic polyesters as the highly degradable prepolymer for the produced polyester polyurethanes. The inclusion of three biobased crosslinkers and the impact of isocyanate indexing was probed and tracked using the enzymatic degradation assay. The pathway to compostability was confirmed using respirometry analysis on a set of prepared polyurethanes. Targeting compostability as the final disposal mechanism through the synthesis of novel materials is challenging when balancing the material property demands with biodegradation needs. Furthermore, the need for a home compostable food contact safe pressure sensitive adhesive was addressed through the synthesis of a branched polymeric material from potentially biobased monomers. Pressure sensitive adhesives are viscoelastic materials that require tight control of adhesive and cohesive properties through synthesis and formulation. The pressure sensitive adhesive has been produced and characterized in the laboratory setting, shown proof of concept in a pilot scale reactor, coated onto films using an industrial hot melt coating line, and converted into labels.