Plant-Based Plastics Could Soon Be Recycled Hundreds of Times Thanks to New Breakthrough
8th February 2020
Around 45% of plastic waste is recycled annually in the UK and is on the increase. However, one of the problems with current plastic recycling methods is that you end up with a lower-quality plastic with worse properties than the original.
This means that plastic drinks bottles cannot simply be recycled into new drink bottles continuously, but instead are used for other lower-grade products such as park benches and traffic cones.
Now, scientists from the Universities of Bath and Birmingham have developed a new way of chemical recycling—converting plastics back into their constituent chemical molecules—so that they can be used to make new plastics of the same quality as the original.
Will it persuade the plastic-bag nannies to shut up? Don’t bet on it.