Two University of Iowa faculty members have been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to develop new plastic ...

So far, recycling efforts haven't lived up to the hype, with only about 9% of plastic items getting recycled. An estimated 12 ...

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 - ...

Seeing plastic trash while hiking inspired a Rutgers chemist to rethink why synthetic plastics last forever while natural ...

Recently, scientists have introduced carbon monoxide (CO) into polyethylene polymer in the presence of a nickel catalyst to develop a new material that can undergo photodegradation. Image Credit: ...

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 ...

A team at UC Berkeley has developed a process that turns plastic waste into something more valuable – an adhesive. Based on an engineered catalyst, the inspiration was to find ways to "upcycle" ...

To address the growing concern of accumulated non-degradable plastic waste in the oceans, a research group at Cornell University, USA, has developed a novel high-strength synthetic polymer called ...

Pending policies that demand more recycling cannot offset problems of high costs and competition from cheap virgin polymers ...

The average person uses a typical plastic bag for as short a time as 12 minutes before throwing it away, never thinking of where it may end up. Biodegradable plastic bags are marketed as more ...