Polyethylene plastics -- single-use bags and general-purpose bottles -- are indestructable forever plastics. That also makes them hard to recycle. Chemists have found a way to break down the polymer - ...

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 ...

A pair of robust and inexpensive catalysts can help recycle mixtures of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), two of the most common and intractable types of plastic waste (Science 2024, DOI: ...

The world's appetite for propene (propylene) is growing faster than the chemical industry can keep up. This petrochemical product powers the production of acrylonitrile, propylene oxide, high-velocity ...

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 ...

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 ...