At the UGA New Materials Institute, we believe that a material’s useful end-of-life should be considered at the design stage and that Green Engineering principles should be part of this process.
Large-scale manufacturing of petroleum-based plastics began in the 1950s. Fast-forward almost 70 years, and scientists are in the early stages of understanding how plastic particles on the micro- and nano-sized scales are impacting humans, animals, and our planet. Click here to watch a video on “plasticosis.”
Jenna Jambeck has been named a Regents’ Professor in recognition of the national and international reach of her work in environmental engineering. Regents’ professorships are bestowed by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia and are the highest professorial recognition in the state’s system of public colleges and universities.
Researchers and students from the University of Georgia New Materials Institute will participate in five sustainably-related projects funded by the Center for Bioplastics and Biocomposites, or CB2, for 2023.
The projects were selected by CB2’s Industry Advisory Board at its fall meeting held in November in Atlanta. The IAB meets twice a year for updates on existing research projects and to develop new projects for future funding.
In 2023, UGA NMI research teams will continue their involvement in two existing projects:
The Little-Known Nylon: Nylon 59 Properties — Principal Investigators:
Eric Cochran, the CB2 Site Director for Iowa State University, and the Mary Jane Skogen Hagenson & Randy L. Hagenson Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering within the College of Engineering;
and Jason Locklin, CB2 Site Director for UGA, and Director of the UGA NMI. Locklin is also a Distinguished Faculty Scholar in the College of Engineering, where he is a Professor of BioChemical Engineering. Additionally, he serves as a Professor in the Department of Chemistry within the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
Investigation of the Marine Degradability of Polymers of Interest to IAB Members — Principal Investigators:
Branson W. Ritchie, Director of Technology Development & Implementation for the UGA NMI, a Distinguished Research Professor, and Director of the UGA Infectious Diseases Laboratory.
New projects involving UGA NMI teams in 2023 are:
Bio-based Coatings for High-Performance Flexible Paper Packaging Application — Principal Investigators:
Suraj Sharma, Professor of Textiles, Merchandising and Interiors in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences;
and Sudhagar Mani, Professor of Chemical, Materials, and Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering.
Water Barrier Mechanisms in Bio-based Polymers — Principal Investigators:
Andriy Voronov, Professor of Coatings and Polymeric Materials at North Dakota State University;
and Sergiy Minko, the Georgia Power Professor of Fiber and Polymer Science, Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Interiors, within the College of Family and Consumer Sciences; and, Professor in the Department of Chemistry within the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
Utilizing Hemp Hurd. Improving Hemp Hurd Performance as Filler in Plastic Manufacturing — Principal Investigators:
Ali Amiri, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at NDSU;
Chad Ulven, a Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at NDSU;
Breeanna Urbanowicz, Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center;
and, Maria Peña, Associate Research Scientist, Complex Carbohydrate Research Center.
CB2 is an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center and is funded, in part, through the National Science Foundation. Representatives from CB2’s industry partners comprise an Industry Advisory Board that meets twice a year to review progress on current projects and, to pitch and assess new proposals. IAB members share in the research and development costs, as well as in the intellectual property; additionally, IAB representatives work directly with university faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students to develop technologies that can be rapidly adopted by industry. The program provides hands-on training while ensuring funds and projects are focused on rapid development of tools needed by industry to further sustainability goals. Students and university researchers work under the mentorship of industry scientists and product developers from some of the biggest names in industry: Amazon, Ford, John Deere, ADM, Kimberly-Clark, 3M, BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sherwin-Williams, AkzoNobel, Danimer Scientific, NatureWorks, RWDC Industries, and Avery Dennison, among others. Projects are funded through IAB membership fees, with Center/Site support funding provided by the NSF. CB2’s four search sites are located at North Dakota State University, Iowa State University, Washington State University, and the University of Georgia.
For more information about CB2, visit https://cb2center.org/home.
Jenna Jambeck, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Georgia, was named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow on Wednesday (Oct. 12) for her work investigating the scale of plastic pollution and galvanizing efforts to address plastic waste.
Commonly known as “Genius Grants,” the fellowship presented by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is among the most prestigious in the country. It is awarded to individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits for the benefit of society. Fellows are nominated by a select pool of experts and leaders in the arts, sciences, humanities and more areas.
Jambeck becomes the second UGA faculty member to receive the award.
Jambeck co-founded the New Materials Institute and leads its Center for Circular Materials Management.
The Industry Advisory Board for the Center for Bioplastics and Biocomposites, or CB2, recently met to evaluate progress on 2022 research projects and to begin considering projects for 2023.
Six current research projects, all led or co-led by faculty from the UGA New Materials Institute, received good feedback from the IAB. Some of these projects will be completed in 2022 and a few are expected to be continued through all or part of 2023. Decisions on what projects to continue for 2023, as well as which new ones to fund, will be made at the IAB’s fall meeting in November, in Atlanta.
Just over two dozen new projects were pitched by IAB member companies to be considered for 2023 funding. Over the summer these ideas will be shaped by industry mentors who expressed interest in the project seeds. The project seeds are then put forth to the University members as a request for proposals.
The spring 2022 IAB meeting was held at the Washington State University campus in Pullman, which serves as one of CB2’s research sites. The meeting, which included some virtual attendees, was CB2’s first in-person event since fall 2019 due to covid-19 pandemic. The fall 2022 meeting is also planned as an in-person event at Kimberly Clark Corporation with optional virtual attendance.
CB2 is an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center and is funded, in part, through the National Science Foundation. Representatives from CB2’s industry partners comprise an Industry Advisory Board that meets twice a year to review progress on current projects and, to pitch and assess new proposals. IAB members share in the research and development costs, as well as in the intellectual property; additionally, IAB representatives work directly with university faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students to develop technologies that can be rapidly adopted by industry. The program provides hands-on training while ensuring funds and projects are focused on rapid development of tools needed by industry to further sustainability goals. Students and university researchers work under the mentorship of industry scientists and product developers from some of the biggest names in industry: Amazon, Ford, John Deere, ADM, Kimberly-Clark, 3M, BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sherwin-Williams, AkzoNobel, Danimer Scientific, NatureWorks, RWDC Industries, and Avery Dennison, among others. Projects are funded through IAB membership fees, with Center/Site support funding provided by the NSF. CB2’s four search sites are located at North Dakota State University, Iowa State University, Washington State University, and the University of Georgia.
For more information about CB2, visit https://cb2center.org/home.
Jenna Jambeck was enjoying family time on Memorial Day when she received a surprising message.
It was a call from a fisherman who had found something that he thought belonged to her: a plastic bottle. She had rigged it with a tracking device and dropped it into the Mississippi River in St. Louis to learn how trash travels in our waterways. On the bottle was a note with Jambeck’s contact info and a promise of a reward for its safe return if found.
“I get this message saying it’s in west Baton Rouge. I didn’t release any bottles in Baton Rouge,” says Jambeck, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor in Environmental Engineering and associate director of the university’s New Materials Institute. The institute focuses on sustainable product designs and rethinking how we manage our waste. “I’m thinking to myself, This must be a joke.”
So she asked him to send her a photo of the bottle. It turns out the bottle, referred to as Rogue One by the Star Wars-loving Jambeck, was one dropped upriver 881 miles away near St. Louis.
Improving the circular systems related to collection, recovery and management of organic waste will help local communities lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the accumulation of food-contaminated packaging in their landfills. There is a growing need for new strategies to strengthen management in this waste category, as more localities ban food waste from landfills and/or extend producer responsibility for waste management to manufacturers, particularly for packaging.
Researchers at the University of Georgia’s New Materials Institute will help their hometown and five other U.S. communities improve organic-waste management practices through a 2-year project funded by a $1.2 million grant from the Walmart Foundation. The research will yield organic-waste management strategies that communities can adopt and scale, based on their population and resources. Organic waste includes food scraps and food-soiled packaging, as well as yard waste.
Diverting food waste from landfills to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions is a high priority for the U.S. government, but local communities tasked with managing this waste stream currently lack the infrastructure and strategies needed to make improvements. To elicit current practices and conditions, the team will first conduct surveys and interviews with stakeholders in waste management, restaurant and business communities, as well as residents from apartments and single-family homes. For granular solutions that can be modeled for a variety of community sizes, the team will partner with two towns in each of three population densities: 400,000 and up, about 100,000, and under 40,000.
Utilizing the Circularity Assessment Protocol (CAP), developed at the New Materials Institute, the team will gain insight into local tipping fees, the types of waste management technologies used in a community, their associated costs and their availability to consumers. The CAP will also yield data on the most commonly used products in communities, local recycling trends and other consumer behaviors related to waste management. This assessment helps identify what type of waste leaks into local environments and why, and facilitates development of strategies to minimize leakage.
“We will investigate the root causes of landfilled organics in these communities to identify the collection gaps. The data will also drive our design of organics-waste collection technologies to address the gaps we find and accelerate the diversion of this waste,” said Evan White, a co-principal investigator on the project and director of the Institute’s Bioseniatic Laboratory, which studies degradation in simulated environments.
The second part of their project will focus on deploying and testing these safe, sanitary organic-waste collection technologies—bins that vary in size, complexity and operation, based on local needs. The researchers will also conduct workshops to help educate people on composting and better waste-management practices.
In the U.S., more food waste is landfilled than any other material. It makes up more than 24% of the municipal solid waste stream and is the nation’s third-largest generator of methane gas, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. By diverting landfill-bound food waste to composting sites, individuals can curb their own carbon footprint.
Currently four states—Maine, Oregon, Massachusetts and California—have passed legislation aimed at diverting food waste from landfills in order to lower GHG emissions. Maine and Oregon passed extended producer responsibility laws for packaging in 2021, and at least six states are considering similar legislation for their 2022 sessions.
Other principal investigators on the project include Jenna Jambeck, the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor in Environmental Engineering and lead of the Circularity Informatics Lab in the New Materials Institute; Jason Locklin, director of the New Materials Institute, a Distinguished Faculty Scholar in the College of Engineering and professor of chemistry; and Branson W. Ritchie, a Distinguished Research Professor who is director of technology development and implementation for the institute and of the Infectious Diseases Laboratory.
Writer/Contact: Kat Yancey Gilmore, 706/542-6316, kygilmor@uga.edu
The University of Georgia New Materials Institute will pursue six sustainably-related research projects in 2022 that were recently funded by the Center for Bioplastics and Biocomposites’ Industry Advisory Board.
The project selections were finalized at the annual Fall Meeting of the IAB. The meeting was held virtually and attended by representatives from all four university research sites for CB2: UGA, Washington State University, Iowa State University, and North Dakota State University. CB2 is an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center funded by the National Science Foundation. The research cooperative was recently granted a Phase II award.
The IAB voted to renew funding for “Investigation of the Marine Degradability of Polymers of Interest to IAB Members,” which launched in early 2021 under the direction of Dr. Branson W. Ritchie, a Distinguished Research Professor who leads the UGA Infectious Diseases Laboratory and heads Technology Development and Implementation for the New Materials Institute.
Three new projects funded for 2022 will be conducted solely by the New Materials Institute faculty and students, along with mentors from industry; two others will be conducted jointly by UGA and Iowa State University, with the project mentors from industry. “Soybean-Derived Thermoplastics for Improved Bioplastic Performance” will be co-led by Jason Locklin, director of the New Materials Institute and CB2 site director for UGA, and Eric Cochran, CB2 site director for ISU.
The 2022 projects are:
Bio-Based Coatings for High-Performance Flexible Paper Packaging Application
Exploration of the Enzymatic Hydrolysis of PLA-based Polyester Blends Using Embedded Enzymes
Hemicellulose Derived Commodity Chemicals for Packaging and Coating Applications
Soybean-Derived Thermoplastics for Improved Bioplastic Performance
Little-Known Nylon: Nylon 59 Properties
CB2’s IAB meets twice a year to review progress on current projects and, to pitch and assess proposals. IAB members share in the research and development costs, as well as in the intellectual property; additionally, IAB representatives work directly with university faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students to develop technologies that can be rapidly adopted by industry. The program provides hands-on training while ensuring funds and projects are focused on rapid development of tools needed by industry to further sustainability goals. Students and university researchers work under the mentorship of industry scientists and product developers from some of the biggest names in industry: Amazon, Ford, John Deere, ADM, Kimberly-Clark, 3M, BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sherwin-Williams, AkzoNobel,Danimer Scientific, NatureWorks, RWDC Industries, and Avery Dennison, among others. Projects are funded through IAB membership fees, with Center/Site support funding provided by the NSF.
For more information about CB2, visit https://cb2center.org/home.
Researchers from the University of Georgia developed a new indigo dyeing technology that’s kinder on the planet. The new technique reduces water usage and eliminates the toxic chemicals that make the dyeing process so environmentally damaging. And to top it off, the technology streamlines the process and secures more color than traditional methods.
“The textile industry is a classic example of an environmental polluter, and one of the major causes of pollution in the industry is coloration,” said Sergiy Minko, a corresponding author of the study and the Georgia Power Professor of Fiber and Polymer Science in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. Originally, natural indigo was used to dye textiles. Introduced to the Colonies in the 1700s, indigo was an important cash crop for early America. But the discovery of a way to produce synthetic indigo almost entirely wiped the natural indigo market off the map.
Published in the journal Green Chemistry, the new method of dyeing uses natural indigo (though the streamlined process could also use synthetic) and completely eliminates the use of harmful chemicals used in conventional methods. It also requires only one coat of the indigo to secure over 90% of the color, significantly reducing the amount of water needed to dye the fabric.
rogram (I/UCRC) grant. This new funding, along with contributions from industry partners, will total $1,950,000 and will be shared among the four collaborating universities that comprise CB2.