{"id":46500,"date":"2023-03-29T21:16:14","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T21:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/?p=46500"},"modified":"2023-03-29T22:36:16","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T22:36:16","slug":"what-can-we-do-about-all-the-plastic-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/2023\/03\/29\/what-can-we-do-about-all-the-plastic-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"What can we do about all the plastic waste?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Newswise \u2014 Plastic pollution is a global problem that continues to grow. Over 400 million tons of plastic is produced every year, and each year manufacturers make more than the year before. Despite the high energy and carbon value in plastics, and the large investment to initially create these versatile materials, most plastic is never recycled. In fact, less than 10% of plastic has ever been recycled. Instead, it is piling up in landfills, collecting on the sides of the roads and along beaches, ultimately polluting our lands and waters.<\/p>\n

An interdisciplinary team of scientists, led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE\u2019s) Ames and Argonne National Laboratories, have banded together to develop new ways to chemically recycle plastics and transform them into more valuable products, a process called upcycling.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAt iCOUP, we are developing the science needed to advance technologies that can address the plastic waste accumulation problem.\u201d \u2014 Aaron Sadow, director of the Institute for the Cooperative Upcycling of Plastics (iCOUP)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This effort is led by the Institute for the Cooperative Upcycling of Plastics (iCOUP), a DOE Office of Science Energy Frontier Research Center. iCOUP brings together chemists and materials scientists from the national labs and universities across the country. Their goal is to develop the chemical pathways that will enable companies to turn plastic waste into valuable commodities.<\/p>\n

The truth is, plastic is hard to recycle. Plastic is made of long chains of molecules called polymers. These polymer chains make plastics strong and durable, but once the chains are broken, they are very difficult to put back together again, and the plastics\u2019 properties degrade. Melting and remolding during recycling tend to break some chains, producing plastic typically of a lower quality than the original material. In addition, most plastics are made from inexpensive petrochemicals, and the cost to manufacture new plastics is less than the cost to recycle. Plastics are also designed to be durable, so it can take more than 1,000 years for a piece of plastic to break down in a landfill.<\/p>\n

But what if plastics never made it into the landfill in the first place?<\/p>\n

\u201cAt iCOUP, we are developing the science needed to advance technologies that can address the plastic waste accumulation problem,\u201d said Aaron Sadow, the director of iCOUP and a chemist at Ames Lab. \u200b\u201cIf successful, we can develop a carbon cycle that takes the carbon in plastics and recycles it in the form of other chemicals and materials.\u201d Ultimately, this could make plastics part of a circular economy, where plastic is never sent to a landfill.<\/p>\n

The iCOUP team is developing new chemical recycling methods to make sustainable, high-quality plastic materials and transform plastic into valuable chemical products, such as lubricants and surfactants, which reduce the surface tension of a liquid.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 20 or 30 years, we want to use the technology we develop at iCOUP to make new products from plastic waste that is currently lost in the environment,\u201d said Massimiliano Delferro, a chemist at Argonne and the deputy director of iCOUP. \u200b\u201c<\/strong>But scientifically, that\u2019s a big challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their bold vision recently led to a string of successes.<\/p>\n

The iCOUP team is developing ways to take the large molecules that make up plastic and selectively convert them into saleable chemicals. Over the past few months, the iCOUP team published several scientific papers on their various approaches to this problem.<\/p>\n