PubMed · 2026-05-13
Researchers built a fully plant-based plastic called celluplastic from wood-derived cellulose that matches the strength and flexibility of conventional fossil plastics, while remaining biodegradable and recyclable in plain water for over 100 cycles with no meaningful performance loss.
Celluplastic achieves tensile strength above 30 MPa and strain above 100%, matching conventional fossil plastics in both toughness and flexibility.
The material was recycled in an aqueous (water-based) closed-loop process for over 100 cycles with no substantial loss of mechanical performance.
The bioplastic is constructed entirely from wood-derived cellulose components: microfibrillated cellulose networks, dialcohol cellulose nanorods, and modified cellulose molecular chains, requiring no synthetic cross-linking agents.
