Bioengineers create plastic from renewable biomass

Fossil oil based plastic refining has been the source of large amounts of pollution and waste since the creation of commercial use polymers. Recently, a team of bioengineers from the South Korean company LG Chem and researchers from KAIST University came up with a way of producing polymers from Polylactic Acid (PLA). The creation of this new way of creating polymers through renewable biomass materials addresses the pollution aspect of the current fossil fuel refining for polymers and the limiting amount of fossil fuels. This is the leading invention in the move towards a greener future, which seems to be a growing interest throughout our nation and the world. I found this topic very interesting because "going green" is a hot topic in many areas of industry lately and commercial polymer refining would cut its pollution exponentially by switching to biomass materials from fossil fuels. Also, this opens my eyes to the possibilities of expanding outside of the medical products industry as a bioengineer.