Used in everything from water bottles to medical devices to building materials to clothes; plastic is a given in our daily lives. Yet, only about 9 per cent of plastic is recycled — the rest ends up ...

A team of researchers led by Plastics Engineering Asst. Prof. Aboutaleb (Amir) Ameli was awarded $2.7 million to develop technologies for recovering plastics and natural fibers from mixed, ...

The increasing accumulation of plastic waste, especially from multilayer packaging, heterogeneous mixed plastic materials, and contaminated streams, poses major challenges to plastics recycling. This ...

A new recycling method breaks mixed plastics into their building blocks and selectively rebuilds each one, turning multilayer packaging and complex waste into usable materials again. (Nanowerk ...

Bio-based plastics such as polylactic acid (PLA) were invented to help solve the plastic waste crisis, but they often end up making waste management more challenging. Because these materials look and ...

For decades, recycling plastic has been a losing game — too slow, too expensive, and too limited in scope. Most methods rely on high-heat extrusion and mechanical separation, degrading the material ...