Toward Infinitely Recyclable Plastics Derived from Renewable Cyclic Esters

Plastics, used in countless consumer products that our daily lives depend on, have become indispensable materials essential for modern life and the global economy. At the same time, currently unsustainable practices in the production and disposal of plastics continue to deplete our finite natural resources and create severe worldwide environmental consequences. In the search for feasible solutions to these issues, significant recent advances have been made in developing chemically recyclable plastics, which allow for recovery of the building-block chemicals via depolymerization, for repolymerization to virgin-quality plastics, or for creative repurposing into value-added materials. Among such recyclable plastics, polyesters derived from renewable cyclic esters possess real potential to meet these challenges. Hence, this review highlights the plastics derived from common four-, five-, six-, seven-, and eight-membered cyclic esters by covering synthetic strategies, material properties, and, particularly, chemical recyclability. Such studies have culminated a recent discovery of infinitely recyclable plastics with properties of common plastics