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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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Plastics are everywhere—in the packaging around your food, the insulation in your home, and even the parts of your phone. They make life easier and safer, but there’s a cost. Nearly 75% of plastic ...

Why it matters: All that packaging we've treated as disposable may finally be reborn. Researchers have cracked the code for turning plastic back into the building blocks to make new plastics. It could ...

A tractor making piles of compost. Firms are developing bacteria and enzymes that might one day be used to break down microplastics in compost. Credit: Shutterstock Synthetic polymers have been on the ...

While biodegradable plastics and recycling technologies have received widespread attention, a quieter revolution is taking place in the form of plant-based coatings for plastics. These innovative ...