Method can upcycle plastic into useful molecules

When we started using plastics about 70 years ago, not much thought—if any—went to the implications of their lifespan and the fact that they can take centuries to decompose. Consequently, as plastics have diversified and become easier to manufacture, the planet is now stuck with some 8.3 billion tons of the stuff—almost every bit of plastic ever produced—without enough technology or incentives to shrink that growing pile. Plastic is cheaper and easier to produce and throw away than it is to recycle.

Researchers Susannah Scott and Mahdi Abu-Omar are poised to shift this decades-old paradigm. How? With a one-pot, low-temperature catalytic method that upcycles polyethylene—a polymer found in about a third of all plastics produced, with a global value of about $200 billion annually—into high-value alkylaromatic molecules that are the basis of many industrial chemicals and consumer products.