The world is miserable at recycling plastics. Currently, just 10–15% of the plastic waste we generate annually is recycled — with the rest incinerated, buried in landfill or dumped as litter 1, 2. A ...

Graduate student RJ Conk adjusts a reaction chamber in which mixed plastics are degraded into the reusable building blocks of new polymers. A new chemical process can essentially vaporize plastics ...

A new process to recycle existing plastics indefinitely and reduce the flood of plastics into landfills is being developed by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. From sandwich bags ...

A radical new process “vaporizes” plastic bags and bottles to help make recycled materials. American scientists say the innovative chemical procedure turns ubiquitous waste items into hydrocarbon ...

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One reason plastic waste persists in the environment is because there’s not much that can eat it. The chemical structure of most polymers is stable and different enough from existing food sources that ...

Europe produced 58.8 million tonnes of plastics in 2022. — © AFP JOSH EDELSON Europe produced 58.8 million tonnes of plastics in 2022. — © AFP JOSH EDELSON ...

Why it matters: All that packaging we've treated as disposable may finally be reborn. Researchers have cracked the code for turning plastic back into the building blocks to make new plastics. It could ...

The Canadian chemical recycler is working to scale up a unique process it says is more flexible and cost effective than traditional pyrolysis. Image courtesy of Aduro Clean Technologies Inc. As it has ...

A tractor making piles of compost. Firms are developing bacteria and enzymes that might one day be used to break down microplastics in compost. Credit: Shutterstock Synthetic polymers have been on the ...