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The Rise of Biodegradable Plastics & New Recycling Technology

Earth 911

Biodegradable plastics have emerged as a potential solution to the severe environmental problem caused by. The post The Rise of Biodegradable Plastics & New Recycling Technology appeared first on Earth911.

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CSU Announces Redesigned “Dream” Biodegradable Plastics

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While they are biodegradable in the ambient environment, they are brittle and cannot easily be melt-processed and recycled. ” CSU notes that the new PHA can be chemically recycled back to its building-block molecule with a simple catalyst and heat, and the recovered clean monomer can be reused to reproduce the same PHA again.

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A Plastic Economy: Is Recycling Broken?

HumanNature

How can you limit your consumption of plastic products and help increase the percentage of plastics being recycled? Clothing, electronic devices, medical devices, and numerous other technologies that make the world a better place exist because of the industrialization of plastic. They are used to prolong the shelf life of foods.

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Carbon-based inks make first fully recyclable transistors

Physics World

Electronic waste is an increasingly serious problem, not least because it is hard to recycle the silicon-based components that make up the bulk of consumer electronic devices. Electronics containing carbon-only components could be ideal for making printable, recyclable devices.

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Machine learning helps researchers separate compostable from conventional plastic waste with ‘very high’ accuracy

Frontiers

Despite their merits, these products, including wrappers and packaging, can contaminate conventional plastic waste in the recycling process. Some of these plastics, called compostable plastics, can be engineered to biodegrade under controlled conditions. Disposable plastics are everywhere: Food containers, coffee cups, plastic bags.

Waste 110
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How a bacterium may help solve the plastic pollution crisis

Environmental News Bits

Read the full story from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology. Researchers have found that the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis can fermentatively convert environmentally problematic poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) plastics into highly biodegradable poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) plastics.

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DOE Publishes New Strategy for Plastics Innovation

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The SPI states that “even when robust processes are developed to deconstruct existing plastics, the demand for plastics remains, leading to a critical need for new plastic materials that have the same advantages as current plastics but can be economically recycled or biodegraded safely in the environment.”