Little of the mixed consumer plastics thrown away or placed in recycle bins actually ends up being recycled. Nearly 90% is buried in landfills or incinerated at commercial facilities that generate greenhouse gases and airborne toxins. Neither outcome is ideal for the environment.
Why aren’t more mixed plastics recycled? It’s usually easier and less expensive to make new plastic products than reclaim, sort, and recycle used ones. Conventional recycling of mixed plastics has previously meant manually or mechanically separating the plastics according to their constituent polymers.
Addressing the issue, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used carefully planned chemical design, neutron scattering, and high-performance computing to help develop a new…
Read the full article originally published at cleantechnica.com.