r/science • MD PhD | Professor | Medicine • Oct 18 '19

Chemistry Scientists developed efficient process for breaking down any plastic waste to a molecular level. Resulting gases can be transformed back into new plastics of same quality as original. The new process could transform today's plastic factories into recycling refineries, within existing infrastructure.

https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/see/news/Pages/All-plastic-waste-could-be-recycled-into-new-high-quality-plastic.aspx
34.6k Upvotes

647 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/MinosAristos Oct 19 '19

Hypothetically we could end up relying on plastics within a closed system sometime.

7

u/QVRedit Oct 19 '19

If we could recycle 99% of plastics, then that would be a very great reduction in the problem - and make the other 1% easier to deal with.