Pyrolysed plastic waste converted into valuable chemical feedstocks

New methods of upcycling plastic waste into high-value chemical feedstocks could provide a crucial economic incentive to improve future rates of plastic recycling. By exploiting reactive chemical groups present in degraded plastics, two research teams have developed new ways of preparing valuable products using robust and established chemistry.

Despite huge pressure to address the growing plastic waste problem, recycling rates remain low, with less than 10% of global plastic waste effectively recycled. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is the challenge of developing an economically efficient treatment process. While researchers have developed many different ways to chemically degrade plastics, the cost of operating these processes on scale typically exceeds the value of the repurposed products, making these strategies unfeasible without extensive government subsidies.