From bio-based furanics to biodegradable plastics

The catalytic conversion of biomass resources into renewable building blocks for the preparation of biodegradable plastics is an open challenge in the modern bio-refinery. In this issue of Chem, Li and co-workers propose a tandem homogeneous carbonylation and heterogeneous hydrogenation process for the conversion of (hemi)cellulose-derived furans into hydroxyalkanoates.