Plastics

A new material from researchers in Spain and Portugal serves as another compelling example of bioactive plastic, making use of extracts from mango leaves to fend off food pathogens and ultraviolet light.

By tweaking the process by which plastic is made, scientists hope to offer functional forms of it that safely and naturally degrade in just a fraction of the time. And recent breakthroughs suggest such a future might not be all that far away.

Researchers in China have demonstrated a new form of plastic that degrades in just a week when exposed to sunlight and oxygen, which they believe could make for electronics that are easier to dispose of at the end of their lives.

Scientists in Austria have discovered a set of enzymes in the stomach fluid of cows that can break down common plastics used in textiles and packaging, offering another potential tool in the efforts to combat this environmental problem.

While bioplastics are a green alternative to petroleum-based plastics that can linger for centuries, scientists in New Zealand have come up with an innovative way to give them a second life, boosting their environmental credentials even further.

Lego has been taking steps toward more sustainable practices and has just revealed the first prototype of its classic brick element crafted from recycled plastic that meets the company's quality and safety requirements.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have taken plastic recycling technology into new territory, demonstrating how an engineered form of E. coli bacteria can be used to turn plastic bottles in vanillin, the primary compound of vanilla flavoring.

By mimicking the self-assembling microstructures that give spider silk its incredible strength, scientists have produced a plant-based film with the strength of common single-use plastics, offering a "vegan" eco-friendly alternative.

Scientists have worked out a way to embed active enzymes in plastic that can give it different capabilities, such as an ability to break down proteins on the surface or degrade itself to avoid polluting the environment.

Discarded carpets take up a lot of space in landfills, or create a great deal of smoke when incinerated. Soon, however, it may be possible to recover high-grade polypropylene from synthetic carpets that would otherwise just end up in the dump.

Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University have devised a method of trapping tiny plastic particles using a sticky bacterial biofilm, which they hope could find use in wastewater plants to prevent them from entering the ocean.

Most plastics don’t break down easily – and when they do, they create problematic microplastic particles. A new type of compostable plastic is embedded with enzymes that, when triggered, quickly break the material down to its constituent molecules.