‘One can begin to imagine a commercial plant that would do this’

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Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a new method for breaking down plastics, Tech Explorist reported.

The process combines two catalysts to efficiently and inexpensively break down two common types of household plastics — polyethylene, which is used in single-use plastics, and polypropylene, which is used for hard plastics — into easily recyclable materials.

Although scientists around the world are hard at work developing new types of plastics (or other non-plastic materials) that are more recyclable and less harmful to our planet, the majority of common plastics that currently exist in our societies are polyethylene and polypropylene, and that means that we need effective ways of dealing with them.

The Berkeley team behind the methods believes that it has provided exactly that: a new method for breaking down one of the most pernicious and harmful forms of waste that exists in our society. Around 80% of post-consumer plastic waste currently ends up in landfills, incinerators, or in the natural environment, where it directly kills wild animals.

“One can argue that we should do away with all polyethylene and polypropylene and use only new circular materials. But the world’s not going to do that for decades and decades. Polyolefins are cheap, and they have good properties, so everybody uses them,” John Hartwig, a UC Berkeley professor of chemistry who led the research, said. “People say if we could figure out a way to make them circular, it would be a big deal, and that’s what we’ve done. One can begin to imagine a commercial plant that would do this.”

In similar news, scientists at the University of New South Wales recently developed a method of breaking down polystyrene (i.e., Styrofoam) and other difficult-to-recycle plastics into reusable raw materials.

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Science created plastic — at great cost to the environment and our planet — and now it seems that science has finally found effective ways to un-create plastic, and not a moment too soon.

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