Develop a new type of plastic designed for continuous recycling

science and technology

A recent survey shows that the United States has been able to recycle 10% of the plastics used in the United States since 2015, and this percentage is not related to its inability to recycle large quantities, but to the nature of plastics that can not be recycled.

But scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have announced the creation of a new type of plastic that can be destroyed and recycled continuously, helping the world address the growing problem of plastic pollution. All plastics are made up of polymers called polymers, Monomers are called chemicals. Chemicals are added to plastic materials to give them the desired qualities, such as stiffness or elasticity – for example, and they remain attached to them even after plastic recycling.

The problem arises when recycled monomers are used to make new plastics without knowing the properties of the chemicals that are associated with these monomers.

A team of scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, according to a study published in the journal Nature Chemistry, has developed a new type of plastic, polydextonimin, or PDCD, which has the potential to dissolve the links between chemicals added and monomers when immersed in plastics In a very acidic solution, allowing researchers to use the resulting "monomers" to make plastic that does not carry the original plastic properties.

"Researchers have not been able to recycle most of the plastics, but we have discovered a new way of assembling plastics that will transfer recycling technologies to a new level of molecular perspective," researcher Peter Christensen said in a press release.