Polymers are used in simple consumer items like carpets, furniture, glues, and clothing but are also used in advanced engineering, including materials used in the aerospace industry. Therefore, polymers and consequently their monomers play an important role in our everyday life. Currently, most of the monomers are produced from fossil resources, the supply of which is diminishing. In this paper we review strategies and catalytic processes to obtain currently used and potentially new monomers from renewable bio-based feedstocks and platform chemicals. This Review is divided by type of monomer and includes diacids and esters, diols, hydroxy acids and esters, lactones, carbonates, cyclic ethers, diamines, amino acids and lactams, alkenes, acrylics, and conjugated dienes. Only routes based on the use of homogeneous catalysis, heterogeneous catalysis, or bio-catalysis are described. Fermentative processes are not discussed.

1-Hydroxy-2,5-hexanedione, obtained in good yield from renewable 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, is a versatile building block for a variety of new compounds.

24/09/12 meb. Author version attached, OK to publish

Herein, we report on the use of the iron pincer complex Iron‐MACHO‐BH, in the base‐free transfer hydrogenation of esters with EtOH as a hydrogen source. More than 20 substrates including aromatic and aliphatic esters and lactones were reduced affording the desired primary alcohols and diols with moderate to excellent isolated yields. It is also possible to reduce polyesters to the diols with this method, enabling a novel way of plastic recycling. Reduction of the renewable substrate methyl levulinate proceeds to form 1,4‐pentanediol directly. The yields are largely governed by the equilibrium between the alcohol and the ethyl ester.