Introduction to the chemical exploitation of renewable materials

This introduction to the special issue describes briefly the wide possibilities of using vegetal biomass (a renewable resource) as a source of monomers, oligomers and polymers. The interest of this strategy is double: on the one hand because a large variety of products is available either directly or after chemical modification and, on the other hand because these sources are continuously renewed and ubiquitous. Thus, simple and complex molecular structures like terpenes, different types of resins, oils, hemicelluloses, tannins, lignins, starch, cellulose... can be extracted directly from many vegetable species whereas other compounds, such as furfural, fatty acids, xylitol, sorbitol... are obtained by isolating different precursors and modifying them chemically.