In recent years, plastic consumption — more so plastic waste — has become a rising problem as landfills overflow and litter-contaminated oceans fatally harm the environment. In fact the earth is currently polluted by roughly 139 million tons of plastic waste, 50% of which are derived from single use plastics. Although a multitude of green and eco-friendly companies have designed new types of biodegradable plastics, scientists at UC Berkeley have recently discovered a way to reuse and recycle already existing non-biodegradable plastic waste by vaporizing it and recondensing the resulting gasses (New Process Vaporizes Plastics). This new innovation has revolutionized what constitutes plastic waste in the modern world.
The innovation of plastic vaporization will allow the two most commonly manufactured single use plastics, polyethylene and polypropylene, to be recycled, forever extending its lifetime and number of uses. Polyethylene makes up the majority of hard plastics; polypropylene, soft gel-based plastics. These two types of plastic are not only non-biodegradable but they make up 80% of all plastic waste. The vaporization process uses chemical reactions to separate the numerous complex polymers in plastic, thus breaking them down into simpler monomer chains that can be reduced from a gas back down into solid reusable plastic pellets. For instance, polyethylene is a polymer that when vaporized reverts back into long isobutylene chains. Polypropylene is also a polymer and its monomer form, propylene, is the result of the vaporization process. After the recondensation of propylene and isobutylene gasses, the resulting plastic pellets can be sold to companies to be used in the manufacturing process all over again. This new way of recycling is a huge step towards making one-time-use products have a circular lifecycle. Scientists have tested many different types of catalysts in order to determine which reactant is most successful in splitting the plastic polymers. (A catalyst is a substance used to increase the rate of a chemical reaction.) It was discovered that tungsten and sodium, both cheap and commonly used chemicals, performed the best throughout the experiments. Since the materials needed to vaporize plastic are so cheap and plentiful, it is likely within the realm of possibilities that plastic vaporization could easily become large-scale and commercialized. Studies have shown that even when plastic waste is contaminated with small amounts of impurities the amount of reusable monomers yielded from the vaporization process remains mostly the same.
Rather than forcing companies to immediately change their manufacturing process to biodegradable plastics, the invention of plastic vaporization provides an excellent alternative to starting from scratch. It also provides a solution on how to utilize and repurpose what would be otherwise useless throw-away plastics. This newly discovered method of recycling has the potential and ability to change the world and improve the current environmental crisis.