Production of biodegradable plastics from carbon dioxide, particularly as a means of recycling industrial waste gas, is a promising advancement in environmental and energy conservation. Recent research and development on CO2-based copolymers has demonstrated new approaches to achieve improvements of thermal and mechanical properties, and extension of functionalization, and practical applications. CO2-based plastics may soon become commercially accessible as a new class of environmentally-friendly, energy-saving and biomedical polymeric materials.