Preface

The demand for plastics has grown tremendously for decades.

Plastic technologies have significantly changed human living,
from a society mainly dependent on metals and wood products
until nowadays, when the majority of products are made from
plastics. At the same time, pollution caused by the disposal of
plastics has become a serious problem and is hard to tackle globally. Although many education campaigns have been organized
to create awareness in society about plastic pollution through
encouraging reduce, reuse and recycle programs, the control
of plastic pollution remains lower than expectations.
Since the elimination of plastic usage is impossible and the
reuse or recyclability of plastics still needs plenty of time to
achieve a satisfactory level, scientists venture into other alternatives by developing polymers derived from renewable sources.
At product life-end, plastics need to naturally degrade and not
cause adverse effects to the environment. Currently, there are
plenty of types of polymer categorized as biodegradable namely
polylactic acid, polycaprolactone, polyhydroxyalkanoates etc.
In this book, the focus is on polylactic acid (or also called
polylactide). Polylactic acid is the largest industrial scale production of biodegradable polymer. Polylactic acid has been used
in biomedical applications for decades to fabricate artificial
bones, scaffolds, sutures or drug carriers for surgery purposes.
Nowadays, mass production enables the cost of PLA material to
be reduced enormously, to a level sufficient for fabrication of
domestic containers, plastic bags, fibers etc.
This book highlights PLA in such a way as to provide
preliminary knowledge about basic PLA technology. It is organized to enable the reader to get basic but sufficient information
about PLA before proceeding to a higher level of research and
development. Readers may want to find out the current market
status of PLA or biodegradable polymers, and this information
has been included in the first chapter. This is followed by other
discussions about mechanical, chemical, thermal, rheology and
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PREFACE

degradation of PLA. All this information is considered by us

to be the preliminary knowledge needed for the reader to get
an initial glance of PLA and then be able to build on this foundation to reach an advanced level. In the final chapter, we summarize the applications of PLA; those that have been found in
the market with the respective brands and applications have
been included. It is not the intention to advertise, but to provide
readers with knowledge about successful PLA penetration into a
wide range of markets.
Finally, we wish to record our special thanks to Dr Sina
Ebnesajjad and Mr Matthew Deans, for advising and assisting
us throughout the writing of this book. We sincerely believe
that this book can promote the development and applications
of biodegradable polymers globally, with the hope of reducing
plastic pollution for a sustainable environment for our future
generations.
Lee Tin Sin
Abdul Razak Rahmat
Wan Aizan Wan Abdul Rahman