Scientists have developed a method that will allow plastic waste to be used in chemical reactions that make toxic compounds ...

Polyethylene plastics -- single-use bags and general-purpose bottles -- are indestructable forever plastics. That also makes them hard to recycle. Chemists have found a way to break down the polymer - ...

Graduate student RJ Conk adjusts a reaction chamber in which mixed plastics are degraded into the reusable building blocks of new polymers. A new chemical process can essentially vaporize plastics ...

Using a catalyst based on ruthenium (gold ball, center), UC Berkeley chemists were able to add specific chemical groups—in this case, OH (red) - to polyethylene polymer chains, creating an oxidized ...

TORONTO (Reuters Life!) - As countries and cities around the world move to ban plastic bags, a Canadian teenager is tackling the problem of what to do with them. Waterloo, Ontario, high school student ...

Polyethylene plastics — in particular, the ubiquitous plastic bag that blights the landscape — are notoriously hard to recycle. They’re sturdy and difficult to break down, and if they’re recycled at ...