In a landfill, a plastic bottle can take more than a thousand years to break down. But a new process can transform polyethylene plastic in days, using bacteria to eat the waste and then turn it into a ...

Plastic is an essential material in the modern world, but it's also environmentally costly to produce and a major pollutant. A material called pyridinedicarboxylic acid, or PDCA, could help address at ...

Polystyrene is made from styrene building blocks and is the most widely used plastic in terms of volume, for example in packaging. Unlike PET, which can now be produced and recycled using ...

Plastic pollution is one of the most defining environmental challenges of our time. Despite efforts to recycle or responsibly dispose of plastic, vast garbage patches in the oceans continue to grow, ...

It's one thing to make bio-based plastics, that is, plastics made from biological materials. It's quite another to make new bioplastics that are also biodegradable -- especially those that biodegrade ...

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- In recent years, at least a half-dozen countries have embraced plastics made with an additive intended to break them down into carbon dioxide, water and harmless organic ...

It’s hard to imagine a time before traditional plastics became commonplace for many single-use food packaging and food-contact applications. It’s even harder to imagine a time without them using ...

Plastics make up approximately 5–12 % of global waste generation, constituting around 20–30 % of waste by weight. Alarmingly, about 60 % of plastics end up as plastic waste (PW) in the environment. 2 ...

It is Carnival season in New Orleans. That means gazillions of green, gold and purple Mardi Gras beads.Once made of glass and cherished by parade spectators who ...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — It is Carnival season in New Orleans. That means gazillions of green, gold and purple Mardi Gras beads. Once made of glass and cherished by parade spectators who were lucky enough ...