Despite global concerns over the accumulation of plastic waste, the drive to produce new plastics shows no signs of slowing down. According to OECD data, the world’s annual plastic production has ...

Sunlight hits tiny particles of plastic floating in a clear water solution. Slowly, they begin to disappear, leaving behind a familiar household chemical: acetic acid, the main ingredient in vinegar.

The plastic lifecycle currently emits more than 0.85 gigatons of greenhouse gases. If current plastic production and consumption patterns continue, emissions could reach 1.34 gigatons per year by 2050 ...

Each manufacturing sector has a distinctive set of tools, processes, technologies, and challenges. These differences make it extremely difficult, costly, and time consuming for manufacturers to adapt ...

Plastic waste is one of the most serious pollution problems on the planet. Plastics are hard to break down and can last for decades in nature, even under the harshest conditions. A new catalyst ...

Plastics are widely used but difficult to degrade, posing an ecological challenge. A team from SIAT developed degradable "living plastics" using synthetic biology and polymer engineering. They ...

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a new method to convert waste plastic into raw materials and fuel. The new process is conducted at low temperatures and with high yield, reducing the ...

Researchers have developed electrochemical methods that break down waste PET plastic, the material in most disposable water and soda bottles, into useful chemical building blocks while simultaneously ...

We know that most plastics thrown into the recycling bin don’t get recycled, but what about the ones that do? According to new research, those also end up spitting bits of plastic back into the ...

Nearly all black plastics get sent to the landfill or get incinerated because their pigment makes them difficult to sort in plastics recycling plants. As a result, the recycling industry pays little ...

Sorting plastic is hard; scientists found compatibilizers may enable direct recycling of mixed plastics into 3D-printed ...