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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Researchers in Germany are set to turn green waste, hay and algae into fully ...

Yuwei Gu was hiking through Bear Mountain State Park in New York when inspiration struck. Plastic bottles littered the trail and more floated on a nearby lake. The jarring sight in such a pristine ...

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Genetically engineered bacteria can not only degrade plastic waste, but they can convert it into valuable industrial chemicals. There are still unknowns -- for example, how to do this at scale and how ...

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 ...

On the eve of World Environment Day, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the Global Plastics Hub, a tool that integrates data from multiple sources to support evidence-based ...

The move to a circular economy for plastics is imminent. With the fourth round of negotiations for the global treaty on plastics pollution happening later this month, and the signing of the final text ...