INFORM November/December 2025

EDITOR’S LETTER

inform November/December 2025, Vol. 36 (10) • 5

Turning trash into a treasured biobased product

Innovation often begins where others see only waste. In this issue, we spotlight how research ers and industry leaders are transforming byproducts and overlooked resources into sus tainable solutions with broad applications. Crude glycerol, a biproduct of biodiesel production, is of low value due to contamination by methanol, water, sodium hydroxide, and residual impurities. Valorizing crude glycerol could make chemical manufacturing more sustainable and biodiesel production more economical. Our cover story this month describes the hurdles in the way of putting crude glyc erol to use and whether biotransformations hold the key to unlocking its full potential. Our article on biomass pyrolysis highlights the promise of bio-oil: a complex, versatile liquid with applications that stretch from energy to food flavorings to advanced materials. Its chemical diversity makes it both a challenge and an oppor

tunity for innovation in renewable resources. Could biomass pyrolysis offer new opportunities for multiple sectors? We then turn to cashew processing, where nutshell liq uid—once discarded as agro-waste—is emerging as a poten tial starting material for sustainable plastics. Researchers show that mixtures of cardanol and cardol can act as effective PVC plasticizers, offering safer, bio-based alternatives to phthalates without sacrificing performance. Together, these stories show how science is steadily rewriting the narrative around “waste”—turning what once seemed like a liability into a resource for the future. Disposal problems are now being reimagined as the foundation of greener chemistry and materials.

Yours in science,