Mission biodegradability: Foundations for the sustainable future of formulated polymers

The commodity formulated products sector profoundly impacts daily life, contributing £129 billion Gross Added Value to the UK economy through a wide range of products, from personal care items to agricultural enhancers. However, nearly all these products are currently derived from oil-based resources and a majority end their life as waste, lost directly to the environment. Despite ongoing efforts to utilise sustainable and renewable feedstocks, many of these formulated products cannot be recovered and circularised, hence the formulation industry is committed to ensuring products are ‘benign by design,’ meaning they have no negative environmental impact post-use. Liquid formulated products are intricate mixtures of small molecules and polymers. While the biodegradation of small molecules is well understood and readily characterised, the behaviour of polymers in these formulations remains less clear. EU Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulations will soon mandate that polymers in liquid formulations (PLFs) must not persist long-term in the environment. Compliance typically involves costly and lengthy OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) biodegradation tests, which present challenges for PLFs due to their single component testing nature, failing to replicate real environmental conditions, potentially yielding unreliable and non-representative results for PLF biodegradation in the environment. This prosperity partnership unites nine partners in a pre-competitive initiative to address these challenges. The aim is to develop predictive models based on accelerated tests to establish design principles for polymer biodegradation, such that new polymers for formulated product innovations can be designed with biodegradability in mind at the start of the process. Additionally, the project seeks to enhance OECD biodegradation tests to better predict environmental outcomes for both individual polymers and those that are delivered within formulations. This programme will forecast the end-of-life environmental fate of PLFs, ensuring truly sustainable solutions and reducing environmental impact. By advancing biodegradable PLF discovery and creating interpretable models for chemical biodegradation behaviour, it will enable systematic development of polymers with targeted degradation properties. This initiative places end-of-life fate as a critical design parameter, ensuring future PLFs are genuinely ‘benign by design’ and supporting net-zero environmental sustainability goals.