While many cities and eight states have banned single-use plastics, bags and other polyethylene packaging still clog landfills and pollute rivers and oceans. One major problem with recycling ...

Around one-third of all plastics produced contain polyethylene, a lightweight, durable thermoplastic with a global value of $200 billion per year. Such plastics are cheap and easy to produce.

Polyethylene plastics — in particular, the ubiquitous plastic bag that blights the landscape — are notoriously hard to recycle. They’re sturdy and difficult to break down, and if they’re recycled at ...

Polyethylene plastics -- single-use bags and general-purpose bottles -- are indestructable forever plastics. That also makes them hard to recycle. Chemists have found a way to break down the polymer - ...

Graduate student RJ Conk adjusts a reaction chamber in which mixed plastics are degraded into the reusable building blocks of new polymers. A new chemical process can essentially vaporize plastics ...

Only a small percentage of plastic bags and other polyethylene packaging is recycled because only low-value products can be made from this waste. Chemists have created a catalytic process that ...