A scientific advance that could revolutionize plastic recycling

Plastic pollution is a global problem of colossal dimensions. Every year, millions of tons of plastic end up in landfills, incinerators or, worse still, in our oceans and ecosystems, wreaking havoc on fauna and flora.

The Climate Crisis requires urgent solutions and there has recently been some good news: A team of researchers has developed a new technique capable of breaking down plastic bags and bottles into their most basic components, which opens the door to a new era of recycling and reuse.

The new technique in a chemical process called “catalytic depolymerization”. Through the use of specialized catalysts, the chemical bonds that hold the polymers together are broken, and they are decomposed into their original monomers, which are the basic molecular units that compose them.

And these monomers can be used to make new high-quality plastics or other products. And that way there would be no need to resort to fossil fuels to generate new plastic products.

This information has been published in the journal Science, creating a feeling of optimism that we must see how is conducted to the market.

Just for information, most plastic packaging is made of polyethylene, and 100 million metric tons are produced in the world each year, starting from fossil fuels.

This material is very resistant and difficult to decompose. Hence the importance of this new announcement. If we are able to decompose polyethylene and with its decomposition be able to generate other products, plastics would be a useful raw material that would not be thrown into our environment.

According to scientists, the process is efficient and scalable, and this catalytic depolymerization offers a number of significant advantages:

• Versatility: The technique can be applicable to a wide range of plastics, polyethylene, polypropylene, etc… which represent the majority of plastic waste
• Efficiency: The process is efficient and manages to decompose a large amount of plastic in a short period of time
• Scalability: The process can be easily scaled to adapt to the management of large volumes of plastic waste, making it a viable solution at an industrial level.
• High-value products: The monomers obtained from depolymerization are of high purity and can be used to manufacture new high-quality plastics, or other chemical products of commercial importance such as lubricants, detergents, etc…

This could create a circular economy for plastic, moving it from being a problematic waste to a source of raw materials. And that would be a really important change.

The “problem” is that we are still many years away from this process becoming an industrial reality. Industrialization, cost improvement, etc… is something that takes time. And time is a parameter that is barely available in the face of the climate challenge before us.

We will have to be positive and hope that this becomes a reality as soon as possible. As always, time will tell us.