Plastic bottles and bags can be vaporised into chemical building blocks and turned into new plastics with all the properties of virgin material. There are hurdles still to overcome, but the new ...

Plastic is cheap to make and shockingly profitable. It’s everywhere. And we’re all paying the price. On a Saturday last summer, I kayaked up a Connecticut river from the coast, buoyed by the rising ...

Current methods to recycle plastics often use expensive catalysts, harsh conditions and produce toxic byproducts. New process converts PET plastic into monomer building blocks, which can be recycled ...

Using a catalyst based on ruthenium (gold ball, center), UC Berkeley chemists were able to add specific chemical groups—in this case, OH (red) - to polyethylene polymer chains, creating an oxidized ...

Chemists at CU Boulder have developed a new way to recycle a common type of plastic found in soda bottles and other packaging. The team’s method relies on electricity and some nifty chemical reactions ...

It's a familiar sight in Midwestern homes: a plastic bag full of plastic bags. For the first time, those bags can be recycled locally and put to good use by preventing plastic waste in landfills, ...

These days, when you head to a shop to buy clothes, most brands package your purchases in a recyclable paper bag, which looks more eco-friendly than plastic. But behind the scenes—in back rooms that ...