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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:55PM (1 child)
In Germany (and many other nations), PET bottles cost $0.25 deposit. When you return them to machine, it gets chopped up and you get coupon back which gives you nice stream of Type 1 plastic chips. There is also collection of all packaging materials (except paper, glass) in separate bags, which should capture most of this garbage. But then they ship some of it to south-east Asia .....
https://www.dw.com/en/german-plastic-floods-southeast-asia/a-47204773 [dw.com]
So there is no easy solutions except demand a no-landfill, no-export-to-landfill solution. And sadly, the best we could hope to do is separation and burning of this stuff.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday May 09 2019, @08:40PM
Still an improvement over the US, but far from ideal.
I think a key to solving the problem is included in that article "But companies that produce synthetic materials only accept recycled plastics when they're at the same level as raw oil in terms of price and quality."
Easy enough to tilt the balance - charge a massive tax on non-recycled plastics. Perhaps 300% of the cost of the equivalent amount of raw oil would be sufficient to motivate them?