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 ...

What if we could help the global plastic waste problem and the transportation industry with the same technology? A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames National Laboratory is ...

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 ...

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 ...

Plastic is a term that refers to a set of materials that can be made from either natural or manufactured resources and can be used to make a variety of products. We look at the raw materials that are ...

Scientists have long known that sunlight helps break down plastic. So, why do plastic products linger for decades and even ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 surging tide of microplastics is already an environmental and health threat, but as the world heats up — driving increasingly extreme weather — it’s transforming them into “more mobile, persistent ...