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 ...

A new chemical process can essentially vaporize plastics that dominate the waste stream today and turn them into hydrocarbon building blocks for new plastics. The catalytic process, developed at the ...

Sunlight hits tiny particles of plastic floating in a clear water solution. Slowly, they begin to disappear, leaving behind 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Attempts in the past have tried adding plastic scrap to traditional building products, but shredding the material and dumping it into concrete or asphalt does not work in most applications because ...

Although plant-based polylactic acid (PLA) bioplastic is acclaimed for its biodegradability, it can take quite a long time to degrade if the conditions aren't quite right. Bearing this fact in mind, ...

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 ...