The 85th edition of the traditional "Prague Meeting on Macromolecules" series of conferences took place in Prague this summer, this time focusing on the topic of " Polymers for Sustainable Future " . During the four-day international conference, the latest advances in polymer chemistry were presented and discussed.

Robin Tannert, employee at the Zittau Institute for Process Development, Circular Economy, Surface Technology, Natural Materials Research (ZIRKON) at the HSZG and doctoral student under the supervision of Prof. Jens Weber (HSZG) and Prof. Andreas Taubert (University of Potsdam) presented research results on the topic "How sustainable are monomers synthesized via an enzymatic pathway?".

Many chemical processes currently require high energy input and/or use environmentally harmful chemicals. Catalyzed reactions, especially by biological catalysts (enzymes), are considered a promising alternative for more sustainable chemistry. The conference paper, which Sarah Barth and Prof. Jakob Hildebrandt from the HSZG also contributed to, investigated whether this assumption is actually true. The life cycle assessments of a novel monomer (a starting material for plastics) in a conventional and an enzymatically catalyzed synthesis pathway were compared. The results show that a general assessment is difficult - while conventional chemical synthesis has disadvantages on the material side (use of chemicals), enzymatic synthesis requires slightly more energy, but "wins" in most typical scenarios.

For his lecture, Robin Tannert was awarded the prize for the best lecture by a young scientist, sponsored by the journal RSC Applied Polymers, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.