Eco-Friendly Additives to Enhance Biodegradability of Conventional Plastics

Overview

NAMI’s eco-friendly additives can be incorporated into conventional plastics to enhance their biodegradability.

  • Eco-Friendly Additives to Enhance Biodegradability of Conventional Plastics
Commercialisation opportunities
Non-exclusive licensing
Problem addressed

Plastics take extremely long time — hundreds of years — to biodegrade, causing serious environmental pollution. NAMI's innovative additive can be incorporated into conventional plastics to accelerate their anaerobic degradation.

Innovation
  • Being incorporated into conventional plastics like polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), etc., NAMI's additive can attract effective microbes to the plastics' surface to accelerate their anaerobic degradation. 
  • Products incorporated with NAMI’s additive show similar mechanical properties as those without.
Key impact
  • Remarkably increase the biodegradation rate of conventional plastics
  • Food contact safe and creates no microplastic
  • Compatible with existing plastic manufacturing processes such as injection moulding, blow moulding and thermoforming
  • Same application as common plastic additives
Award
  • Silver Medal at the “2022 Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions”
Application
  • Conventional plasticware manufactured by common processes
  • Both disposable and reusable plasticware
Nano and Advanced Materials Institute (NAMI)

As a Materials Expert, Nano and Advanced Materials Institute (NAMI) has a strong portfolio of innovative technologies to support and collaborate with the industry, offering frontier-applied research on advanced materials as well as technology transfer for commercialization success.

NAMI, incorporated in 2006, is designated by the Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong Government as a Research and Development Center for nanotechnology and advanced materials. NAMI undertakes and provides support for market-driven research in nanotechnology and advanced materials, and strives for commercialization of the technologies to benefit the industry and the society at large, as well as re-industrialization to promote the economic growth and sustainability of Hong Kong.

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