Recycling

Hundreds of millions of tons of single-use plastic ends up in landfills every year, and even the small percentage of plastic that gets recycled can’t last forever. But our group of materials scientists has developed a new method for creating and deconstructing polymers that could lead to more easily recycled plastics – ones that don’t require you to carefully sort out all your recycling on trash day. In the century since their conception, people have come to understand the enormous impacts – beneficial as well as detrimental – plastics have on human lives and the environment. As a group of polymer scientists dedicated to inventing sustainable solutions for real-world problems, we set out to tackle this issue by rethinking the way polymers are designed and making plastics with recyclability built right in. Why use plastics, anyway? Everyday items including milk jugs, grocery bags, takeout containers and even ropes are made from a class of polymers...

Throwing away an item meant for the garbage may not seem like a big deal. However, when waste integrates with reusable items, it can contaminate the supply. The Ecology Action Center (EAC) of McLean County is warning residents about the long-term damage this can cause. Executive Director Michael Brown explains why this is harmful for the community. “It becomes the dominant material going down the conveyer belt at the sorting facility. So, it takes a lot more time and efforts, and more expensive technology to pull that,” he said. Contamination can directly affect the local trash and recycling services for people living nearby. “It really drives up the cost of recycling services making it less feasible. This is theoretically driving up the costs for residents through their rent, or through their services in family households,” said Brown. He goes by the slogan “when in doubt, throw it out,” when it comes t...

You’ve just finished a cup of coffee at your favorite cafe. Now you’re facing a trash bin, a recycling bin and a compost bin. What’s the most planet-friendly thing to do with your cup? Many of us would opt for the recycling bin – but that’s often the wrong choice. In order to hold liquids, most paper coffee cups are made with a thin plastic lining, which makes separating these materials and recycling them difficult. In fact, the most sustainable option isn’t available at the trash bin. It happens earlier, before you’re handed a disposable cup in the first place. In our research on waste behavior, sustainability, engineering design and decision making, we examine what U.S. residents understand about the efficacy of different waste management strategies and which of those strategies they prefer. In two nationwide surveys in the U.S. that we conducted in October 2019 and March 2022, we found that people overlook waste reduction and reuse...

Humans generate a lot of plastic waste – more than 400 million metric tons a year. To bring this fact a bit closer to home, the U.S. produced an average of 0.75 pounds (0.34 kilograms) of plastic waste per person each day in 2010, which is equivalent in weight to an unopened can of soda. Plastic products have been propelling our quality of life forward for over a century, from keeping food fresh longer to enhancing medical hygiene and making transportation more energy-efficient. In the meantime, plastic waste has also accumulated. Today it is an unsolved and growing problem of gargantuan proportions. Worldwide, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled – largely through mechanical processing, creating products like drainage pipes – and 19% is incinerated. The rest is either buried in landfills or has escaped into the environment, where it damages ecosystems and harms human health. To address existing and future plastic waste, new approaches beyond mechanical rec...

Plastic is a fast-growing segment of U.S. municipal solid waste, and most of it ends up in the environment. Just 9% of plastic collected in municipal solid waste was recycled as of 2018, the most recent year for which national data is available. The rest was burned in waste-to-energy plants or buried in landfills. Manufacturers assert that better recycling is the optimal way to reduce plastic pollution. But critics argue that the industry often exaggerates how readily items can actually be recycled. In September 2024, beverage company Keurig Dr Pepper was fined US$1.5 million for inaccurately claiming that its K-Cup coffee pods were recyclable after two large recycling companies said they could not process the cups. California is suing ExxonMobil, accusing the company of falsely promoting plastic products as recyclable. Environmental law scholar Patrick Parenteau explains why claims about recyclability have confused consumers, and how forthcoming guidelines from the U.S. Federa...