Seaweed as Bioplastic Research - Ch. 1 and 2

Plastics are carbon-based polymers and we make them mostly from petroleum. With the discovery of plastics, life became much more convenient because it is used to make a wide array of useful materials. But these plastics are so durable that it will take many centuries for these plastics to completely degrade while other plastics will last forever. Discarded plastics are also a big cause of pollution and because of that, plastics make our environment a much less attractive place (Atienza, 2009).

Getting rid of plastics is extremely difficult. Burning these plastics gives off harmful chemicals such as dioxins that could contribute to Global Warming. Recycling these plastics is also difficult because there are many different kinds of plastics and each has to be recycled by a different process. Though these plastics are considered to be one of the greatest innovations ever, they are also imposing a great havoc to the environment, the wildlife and the general public (Woodford, 2008). For this reason, this study aims to develop a biomass-based plastic from the natural polysaccharides of seaweeds.

Biomass-based plastics or bioplastics are a form of plastics derived from renewable biomass resources like vegetable oil or corn starch rather than the conventional plastics which are made from petroleum. Their advantage are innumerable and one is their capability to biodegrade naturally within a short period of time only (Sweeney, 2008). 

Seaweeds are best known for the natural polysaccharides that can be extracted from them which are widely used particularly in the fields of food technology, biotechnology, microbiology and even medicine but not yet in the plastic industry. Some of these polysaccharides are Floridean starch, agar and alginate (Montano, 2010) Since they are renewable biomass resources and are polymers made from sugars which contain carbon, they could be used to create a bioplastic. 

In this study, the natural polysaccharides from selected Philippine marine seaweeds will be utilized to develop a biodegradable and high-quality bioplastic.