Sustainable Nanotechnology

9Sustainable and Eco‐safe Nanocellulose‐based Materials for Water Nano ‐treatment

Carlo Punta¹, Andrea Fiorati¹, Laura Riva¹, Giacomo Grassi², Giulia Liberatori², and Ilaria Corsi²

¹ Department of Chemistry, Materials, and Chemical Engineering “G. Natta”, Politecnico di Milano and INSTM Local Unit, Milano, Italy

² Department of Physical, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Siena and INSTM Local Unit, Siena, Italy

9.1 Eco‐safe Materials: Behind a Story

Circular Economy and Sustainability. In the last decade, these two keywords have become more and more crucial in the development of new products and processes. From one side, an increasing demand for virtuous waste management is pushing toward not only simple recycling and reusing of discharged materials but rather toward their valorization by the design of up‐scaled secondary products. On the other side, the whole circular process has to be sustainable from cradle‐to‐gate (or to grave), which could be declined in three key steps: (i) sustainability of the sources of choice, (ii) sustainability of the production processes, and (iii) sustainability of the new products in the final environment of use, which means eco‐safety of the new devices.

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) do not represent an exception in this approach. On the contrary, the high concerns related to the use of ENMs, associated to the potential risks for environment and human health, require an even more careful attention in the development of new nanotechnologies ...