Locked degradability breaks plastic paradox

Mechanical activation converts a strong new polymer into an alternative chemical form that more easily degrades into simple monomer units. The idea could offer a way to regenerate valuable chemical feedstocks from discarded plastics.

Plastics are ubiquitous in modern life. Their chemical inertness and durability make them ideally suited to thousands of diverse applications, but limit the ease with which they can be recycled. The strong carbon–carbon bonds of the polymer backbone are challenging to break, and current recycling methods generally reuse the polymer chain rather than recovering the chemical feedstocks that are locked within it. Degradable plastics incorporate other functional groups into the polymer backbone but this tends to reduce their stability, making them unsuitable for most commercial uses.