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 ...

Chemists have developed a catalytic process that turns the largest component of today's plastic waste stream, polyolefin plastic bags and bottles, into gases -- propylene and isobutylene -- that are ...

A shockingly low percentage of the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic produced every year actually gets recycled.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Polyethylene plastics — in particular, the ubiquitous plastic bag that blights the landscape — are notoriously hard to recycle. They’re sturdy and difficult to break down, and if they’re recycled at ...

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 ...

Researchers have developed a solar-powered reactor that transforms hard-to-recycle plastic waste into clean hydrogen ...

There is no shortage of news about plastic’s ubiquity or its harms. Microplastics are in clouds, drinking water, playgrounds and our blood. Marine mammals are entangled in and ingest plastic at ...

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 ...