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 ...

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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 ...

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 ...

While biodegradable plastics and recycling technologies have received widespread attention, a quieter revolution is taking place in the form of plant-based coatings for plastics. These innovative ...