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Endlessly recyclable plastic (Javascript required.)
By separating plastic monomers from chemical additives, researchers may have created fully recyclable plastics.
Molecular scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed a new type of plastic: polydiketoenamine, or PDK. When immersed in an acidic solution, PDK monomers were broken down and were freed from the additive compounds used in plastic production.
Berkeley Lab staff scientist Brett Helms said: "With PDKs, the immutable bonds of conventional plastics are replaced with reversible bonds that allow the plastic to be recycled more effectively."
Commercial plastics generally contain additives such as dyes or fillers to make them hard, stretchy, coloured or clear. The problem is these additives have different chemical compositions and are hard to separate from the monomers.
Also at Berkeley Lab.
See also: Researchers develop plastic that they are calling the 'Holy Grail' of recycling
This infinitely-recyclable plastic might help us finally clean up landfills and oceans
Closed-loop recycling of plastics enabled by dynamic covalent diketoenamine bonds (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-019-0249-2) (DX)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @11:34AM (4 children)
Society doesn't have a recycling problem or a collection problem.
Society has a consumption problem.
It doesn't matter how efficiently we recycle plastic bottles because the energy isn't free. The problem is all of these single use containers like plastic milk jugs that used to be reusable glass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @12:58PM (3 children)
Yes, energy is not free. That's the principle reason for replacing glass with plastic. In many nations you have significant deposits on these bottles too so that even when they are thrown out, homeless collect them (yes, really, if you would find 10 bottles an hour around here you make more money than minimum wage).
If most of the weight you transport is glass, not the actual drink, where is the energy? And do you get your tomatoes or grapes at the store with in plastic or without? Shampoo? Dish washing detergent? All plastic containers, not just PET bottles.
Almost 8 billion people. They want to live. Living makes garbage. We need solutions, not punting the problem elsewhere.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:06PM (1 child)
Why ship things in bottles at all? Bring your desired bottle into the store and fill it from their cask. Use any size, shape, and material you want, with no energy wasted producing or shipping single-use consumption-sized containers.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:16PM
Bingo. If we all had suitable glass containers we could do exactly that. We would buy new glass containers as needed, but otherwise save up a collection of glass. Either that, or we turn in our containers to the grocery store, they clean them, and then refill them. I saw that in Germany in the 80's.
The problem is this leads to wholesale prices like Costco, and single use containers allow to sell ridiculous small amounts for higher prices.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:56PM
You want a solution? Sorry, I'm not here to break the second law of thermodynamics for you. That there are almost 8 billion people on this planet only further illustrates my point. Do you think the Earth could sustain 8 billion people before the industrial revolution?