Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) can be extracted from mixed microbial cultures (MMCs) by means of
dimethyl carbonate (DMC) or combination of DMC and sodium hypochlorite (NaClO). The protocol based
on DMC, a green solvent never used before for the extraction of PHAs from MMC, allows an overall polymer
recovery of 63%; also the purity and the molecular weight of the recovered polymers are good (98%
and 1.2 MDa, respectively). The use of NaClO pretreatment before DMC extraction increases the overall
PHA recovery (82%) but lowers the mean molecular weight to 0.6–0.2 MDa. A double extraction with
DMC results to be the method of choice for the recovery of high quality PHAs from attractive but challenging
MMCs