A South Coast university is sharing a more than $23 million dollar federal grant for an ambitious project to develop more sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives to petroleum-based plastics.
UC Santa Barbara and UCLA have been named joint partners in the five-year, $23.7-million-dollar effort funded by the National Science Foundation.
The hope is to develop synthetic polymers which are sustainable, bio-based, and cost effective. If the effort is successful, it may mean a drastic change in the way polymers are made.
The intent is to create materials which don’t have the environmental impacts of currently used plastics.
