In a landfill, a plastic bottle can take more than a thousand years to break down. But a new process can transform polyethylene plastic in days, using bacteria to eat the waste and then turn it into a ...

Polyethylene is the most abundantly manufactured plastic in the world. Due to properties like durability, it has many diverse, and even long-term uses. Chemists have now incorporated polar groups in ...

MIT engineers have found a new use for a common plastic, spinning polyethylene into fabric that can passively cool the wearer by allowing heat through and moisture to evaporate. The discovery could ...

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a method to convert a commonly discarded ...

Researchers develop a one-pot, low temperature catalytic method to turn polyethylene polymers into alkylaromatic molecules. When we started using plastics about 70 years ago, not much thought -- if ...

Milk jugs, bags, egg cartons, water bottles — Americans use a lot of plastic packaging. According to the most recent numbers from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans generated 14.5 ...

A California company says it’s developed the world’s first thermoplastic polyurethane made from post-consumer polyethylene waste. The stuff has mechanical performance properties comparable to ...

Plastics normally bound for the landfill are getting a new life from California startup Novoloop. The company upcycles polyethylene, a plastic that’s widely used but rarely recycled. With $11 million ...

A Northampton County company has come up with a way to divert old plastic from cars away from landfills and back into vehicles. Reusing metal from vehicles has been common practice for decades. Steel ...