In recent year, there has been increasing concern about the growing amount of plastic waste coming from daily life. Different kinds of synthetic plastics are currently used for an extensive range of needs, but in order to reduce the impact of petroleum-based plastics and material waste, considerable attention has been focused on “green” plastics. In this paper, we present a broad review on the advances in the research and development of bio-based polymers analogous to petroleum-derived ones. The main interest for the development of bio-based materials is the strong public concern about waste, pollution and carbon footprint. The sustainability of those polymers, for general and specific applications, is driven by the great progress in the processing technologies that refine biomass feedstocks in order to obtain bio-based monomers that are used as building blocks. At the same time, thanks to the industrial progress, it is possible to obtain more versatile and specific chemical structures in order to synthetize polymers with ad-hoc tailored properties and functionalities, with engineering applications that include packaging but also durable and electronic goods. In particular, three types of polymers were described in this review: Bio-polyethylene (Bio-PE), bio-polypropylene (Bio-PP) and Bio-poly(ethylene terephthalate) (Bio-PET). The recent advances in their development in terms of processing technologies, product development and applications, as well as their advantages and disadvantages, are reported.

Three commercial filaments for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) were selected to study the influence of polymer formulation on the printing quality and mechanical properties of FDM specimens. The three filaments were all based on polylactic acid (PLA) as the matrix, and they are sold as PLA filaments. The printing quality was tested by printing one complex shape with overhang features. The marked shear thinning behavior for two filaments was observed by rheology. The filaments were also studied by scanning electron microscopy and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to unveil their composition. The filaments with the best printing quality showed the presence of mineral fillers, which explained the melt behavior observed by rheology. The tensile testing confirmed that the filled PLA was the best-performing filament both in terms of printing quality and thermomechanical performance, with a p-value = 0.106 for the tensile modulus, and a p-value = 0.615 for the ultimate tensile strength.

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is now a very attractive polymer for food packaging application because in addition of being thermoplastic, biodegradable, compostable, and produced from renewable resources, it shows same behavior in mechanical, thermal, and barrier properties comparable to the most used synthetic polymers like polystyrene and poly(ethylene terephthalate). In this work, we take into consideration four commercial PLA films, natural‐ and surface‐modified, to make a correlation between mechanical, thermal, and barrier properties due to the surface modification, to well understand whether PLA is adapt to packaging application, especially in the food field. Films were studied by tensile testing, simultaneous differential thermal analysis/thermogravimetry, differential scanning calorimetry, permeation to carbon dioxide and oxygen at different temperature (7 and 23°C) and FTIR spectroscopic analysis. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012