Lignin from plants boosts the effectiveness of sunscreen

Warm weather means beach vacations and pool-dipping for many of us. It also signals a season of slathering on sunscreen to avoid getting burned. Someday, those products could be enhanced with lignin, a natural material in plants and a major waste product of the paper industry. Scientists report their findings on what kind of lignin works well for this purpose in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.