Biotech Breakthrough Could Revolutionize Plastic Recyling

Plastic is incredibly useful, but plastic waste is a big environmental problem, and plastic recycling has inherent limitations. Of the 7 types of plastics out there, only two - PET and HDPE - are widely recycled.

This could soon change, thanks to a biotech breakthrough that could bring us a step closer to continuous recycling, a holy grail of sustainability.

As a basic fact of their chemistry, plastic polymers can only be recycled once before landing in the back of a dump truck. But researchers at IBM and Stanford University have developed organic catalysts that allow them to recycle plastics again and again.

Organic catalysts could be revolutionary, yielding a new class of plastics that are continuously recyclable, biodegradable, and versatile enough to replace their hard-to-recycle predecessors. A water bottle could be turned back into a water bottle, instead of a low-quality fence post. Or, if thrown by the side of the road, it could break down into the surrounding soil.

Different kinds of plastics could be transformed into each other. So that disposable bottle might be reborn as a high-value car body panel instead. The catalysts are cheap, and work at room temperature. All this could make recycling much more profitable and prevalent, ultimately slowing and reversing the growth of plastic waste.

Of course, we've been promised such biodegradable plastics in the past, and they turned out to be little more than hoaxes, so only time will tell if this is the real deal.

Photo credit: chrissatchwell