The global production of thermosets has been increasing in recent years causing rapid consumption of fossil-based feedstocks and contributing to the plastic waste accumulation in the environment, especially because they cannot be easily reprocessed or recycled at the end of their lifetime. These drawbacks can only be overcome with the development of environmentally friendly, recyclable thermosets from renewable resources. For this reason, we present a facile way to produce a biobased reprocessable thermoset, a vitrimer, by thiol-acrylate coupling between epoxidized soybean oil acrylate and a diboronic ester dithiol dynamic cross-linker. The synthesis of the cross-linker and all the processes for the production of the vitrimer has been done following green chemistry principles. The developed vitrimer material can be reprocessed multiple times like a thermoplastic, without compromising its mechanical properties. Moreover, it can be conveniently recycled by reversible hydrolysis in 90% ethanol and subsequent solvent evaporation, regenerating the original vitrimer. An important advantage of the developed material, especially regarding its applications, is that it is able to self-repair mechanical abrasion-related defects, like scratches and cuts, at room temperature, thanks to the low glass transition temperature and rapid boronic ester exchange, which enables it to demonstrate great potential as a self-healing coating. In case of an accidental release into the environment, it is able to biodegrade, solving the problem of waste accumulation.

In addition to inhibiting the cyclooxygenasemediated biosynthesis of prostanoids, various widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) enhance endocannabinoid signaling by blocking the anandamidedegrading membrane enzyme, fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH). The X-ray structure of FAAH in complex with the NSAID carprofen, along with studies of site-directed mutagenesis, enzyme activity assays, and nuclear magnetic resonance, now reveal the molecular details of this interaction, providing information that may guide the design of dual FAAH-cyclooxygenase inhibitors with superior analgesic efficacy.

Polylactic acid (PLA) is a key biopolymer with potential uses in numerous sectors, since it is biocompatible and both biobased and biodegradable. However, brittleness limits its industrial applications where plastic deformation at high impact rates or high elongation is required, for instance, flexible food packaging. In order to overcome this drawback and potentially expand the PLA market, we developed flexible PLA materials plasticized with renewable and biodegradable epoxidized soybean oil methyl ester reaching elongations at break of almost 800%. The use of amorphous PLA in combination with the lubricating effect of the plasticizer allowed the more sustainable extrusion at a low temperature of 140 °C, preventing the degradation of PLA and at the same time saving energy. Moreover, plasticized films produced, upon handling, significantly less acoustic noise than pure PLA, which is of great importance for food packaging applications. Morphology, thermomechanical and barrier properties, and migration levels were evaluated as a function of plasticizer content.

The industrial processing of avocados annually generates more than 1.2 million tons of avocado peels (APs) and avocado seeds (ASs) that have great potential in the production of active bioplastics, although they have never been considered for this aim until now. Separately, the APs and ASs, as well as a combination of avocado peels and seeds (APSs), were evaluated here for the first time for the preparation of antioxidant films, with application in food packaging. Films were prepared by casting, after their processing by three different methods: (1) hydrolysis in acid media, (2) hydrolysis followed by plasticization, and (3) hydrolysis and plasticization followed by blending with pectin polymers in different proportions (25 and 50 wt %). The results indicate that the combination of hydrolysis, plasticization, and pectin blending is essential to obtain materials with competitive mechanical properties, optical clarity, excellent oxygen barrier properties, high antioxidant activity, biodegradability, and migration of components in TENAX suitable for food contact applications. In addition, the materials prepared with APSs are advantageous from the point of view of the industrial waste valorization, since the entire avocado wastes are used for the production of bioplastics, avoiding further separation processes for their valorization.

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