Natural Polymers: Opportunities and Challenges in the Application and Commercialization as Sustainable Materials Amid Growing Environmental Awareness

Polymeric materials are essential for the performance of plastics and functional ingredients in consumer and industrial products. However, there is a recognized need to shift toward more sustainable production and consumption of materials to address societal concerns on climate change and pollution while improving economic and environmental resilience. Natural polymers can provide sustainability benefits due to their inherent renewability and degradability. Current challenges for natural polymers’ broad usage arise from the limited ability to tailor them for optimized performance due to a lack of full understanding of their inherent architecture and chemical features, as well as an under-developed supply chain, which results in scalability challenges and increased cost. While synthetic polymers have made substantial advancements in foundational science and engineering since their initial development, development of natural polymers has significantly lagged, resulting in nonoptimized performance, low mass efficiency, and high cost. Herein, we provide an industry perspective on actions needed to invigorate and further the development and commercialization of natural polymers for modern applications. We frame such a renaissance in a triad of achieving performance, scalability, and sustainability, which requires cross value-chain collaboration over the entire product lifecycle. We call for cross-sector stakeholders, i.e., academia, industry, and funding agencies, to partner to advance natural polymer innovation and commercialization to sustainably meet modern human needs.