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Papers
61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Plastics Recycling
ClearUpcycling of waste plastics: strategies, status-quo, and prospects
This review examines strategies for upcycling waste plastics into valuable products as an alternative to landfilling and incineration, which generate microplastics and carbon emissions respectively. Researchers survey chemical recycling methods including pyrolysis, gasification, and catalytic processes that can convert common plastics like PET, polyethylene, and polystyrene into fuels, chemicals, and new materials. The study highlights the urgent need for more effective recycling technologies to address the growing gap between plastic production and waste management capacity.
Application of Different Chemical Recycling for Plastics
This review examines chemical recycling methods for plastic waste as alternatives to mechanical recycling, focusing on depolymerization via solvolysis, pyrolysis, and purification processes applicable to PET, polyurethane, and polystyrene. The authors discuss how these approaches convert polymer waste back into feedstock monomers that can be repolymerized, addressing value degradation and sorting limitations inherent to mechanical recycling.
Expanding plastics recycling technologies: chemical aspects, technology status and challenges
This review examined the full life cycle of plastics and evaluated options for managing plastic waste, with a focus on chemical recycling technologies. The study suggests that overcoming barriers to industrial chemical recycling could open new opportunities for reducing plastic pollution.
Polymer‐Based Recycling Strategies for Plastic Waste: A Comprehensive Review
This comprehensive review evaluates mechanical and chemical recycling strategies for plastic waste, noting that mechanical recycling is widely used but limited by polymer degradation, while chemical recycling offers higher quality recovery but at greater energy and financial cost. The study highlights emerging technologies including AI-assisted sorting, nanotechnology, and biodegradable polymer development as promising approaches for building a more circular plastics economy.
Current Advances and Challenges in Chemical Recycling of Polymeric Materials
This review examines current advances and remaining challenges in chemical recycling of polymeric materials as an alternative to mechanical recycling, which degrades material properties with repeated cycling. The authors discuss the high efficiency and simpler preprocessing requirements of chemical recycling methods against a backdrop of approximately 150 million metric tonnes of annual global plastic waste generation.
The Frontier of Plastics Recycling: Rethinking Waste as a Resource for High‐Value Applications
This review examines the current state and future prospects of plastics recycling within a circular economy framework, arguing that mechanical recycling alone is insufficient and that chemical recycling, design-for-recyclability, and extended producer responsibility must all be scaled simultaneously. The authors identify high-value applications for recycled plastics as essential incentives for building economically sustainable recycling systems.
Plastic Waste to Value-Added Products via Recycling and Upcycling
This review examined pathways for converting plastic waste into value-added products through recycling and upcycling, framing solutions within a circular economy approach. The paper surveyed mechanical, chemical, and biological conversion technologies and assessed their potential to reduce plastic waste while generating economically useful outputs.
Approaches for Management and Valorization of Non-Homogeneous, Non-Recyclable Plastic Waste
This review examined management and valorization strategies for non-homogeneous, non-recyclable plastic waste, evaluating chemical recycling, energy recovery, and upcycling approaches as pathways to reduce environmental plastic accumulation and recover value from difficult-to-process waste streams.
The U.S. plastics recycling economy :
This NIST report analyzes the current state of US plastics recycling, comparing state and international recycling programs, examining incentives and barriers for different stakeholders, and evaluating the potential of chemical recycling to supplement mechanical recycling.
On technological solutions for recycling of recycling of polymer waste: A review
This paper is not directly about microplastics; it reviews technological approaches to recycling polymer waste — mechanical, chemical, and energy-based methods — and analyzes their economic and environmental trade-offs. Better plastic recycling technology is relevant to microplastic prevention insofar as it reduces the amount of plastic that degrades into environmental microplastic particles.
Polymers Recycling: Upcycling Techniques. an Overview
This paper is not about microplastics in a research sense; it is an overview of polymer recycling and upcycling techniques, mentioning microplastic accumulation briefly as motivation but not investigating microplastics directly.
Plastic waste recycling: existing Indian scenario and future opportunities
Researchers mapped plastic waste recycling infrastructure across Indian states, finding that PP and PE are most commonly reprocessed, and outlined key opportunities in mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, and waste-to-energy approaches—along with AI and blockchain tools—needed to build a circular plastic economy in India.
Management Strategies for Plastic Wastes: A Roadmap Toward Circular Economy and Environmental Sustainability
This chapter reviews strategies for managing plastic waste — including mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, and circular economy frameworks — as alternatives to landfilling and incineration. Unmanaged plastic waste breaks down into microplastics that spread widely through wind and water, making better upstream management critical for reducing environmental contamination. The authors argue that genuinely circular approaches, where waste is eliminated rather than merely shifted, offer the most effective path to reducing long-term microplastic pollution.
Managing Plastic Waste─Sorting, Recycling, Disposal, and Product Redesign
This review covers the full landscape of plastic waste management, from sorting and mechanical recycling to chemical recycling and disposal methods. The paper highlights that landfills remain the most common disposal method despite generating microplastics and toxic leachate, while advanced recycling technologies are still too expensive for widespread use. Better management of plastic waste is directly linked to reducing microplastic pollution and its associated human health risks.
Recent Advances in the Chemobiological Upcycling of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) into Value-Added Chemicals
This review covers recent advances in biological and chemical upcycling of PET plastic waste into value-added chemicals, examining degradation pathways including pyrolysis, gasification, and enzymatic depolymerization that break PET into monomers for use as bioconversion substrates.
Integration with biotechnological approaches for upcycling waste plastics
This review examines the limitations of mechanical, chemical, and thermal plastic recycling approaches — including restricted reprocessing cycles, high energy costs, and toxic emissions — and evaluates biotechnological strategies such as enzymatic and microbial degradation as complementary routes for waste plastic upcycling. The authors argue that integrating biological and chemical processes offers the most promising pathway for effective upcycling while reducing carbon emissions and advancing circular economy goals.
Sustainable Petrochemical Alternatives From Plastic Upcycling
This review examined pathways for upcycling plastic waste into sustainable petrochemical alternatives, addressing the poor end-of-life recovery prospects that allow carbon-rich plastics to degrade into microplastics in landfills and oceans. The paper assessed chemical and thermochemical conversion technologies that could turn plastic waste into feedstocks for the chemical industry.
An Overview of the Non-Energetic Valorization Possibilities of Plastic Waste via Thermochemical Processes
This review surveys non-energetic valorization options for plastic waste through chemical recycling, covering solvolysis, enzymatic depolymerization, and catalytic cracking pathways that recover monomers or chemical feedstocks. The authors compare process maturity and economic viability, identifying PET and nylon depolymerization as the most commercially advanced chemical recycling routes.
Plastic and the Environment
This chapter reviews the environmental challenges posed by plastic waste, covering the history and properties of plastics, the problems of plastic pollution, and the complexities of plastic recycling including hazardous substance propagation in electronics recycling streams.
Strategies and technologies for sustainable plastic waste treatment and recycling
This review covers current and emerging methods for recycling and treating plastic waste to reduce environmental pollution. The authors emphasize that improperly managed plastics break down into microplastics that contaminate ecosystems, and they evaluate strategies including chemical recycling, biodegradation, and energy recovery as more sustainable alternatives to landfilling.
Valorisation of plastic waste via metal-catalysed depolymerisation
This review covers metal-catalysed depolymerisation approaches for recycling and upcycling waste plastics back into monomers or value-added chemicals, highlighting recent advances in catalyst design that improve selectivity and yield for common polymer types.
Analysis of Plastic Waste Processing Methods
This review summarizes global plastic waste production and recycling trends, arguing that the recycling industry must scale up urgently to address growing environmental contamination. Current recycling rates remain far below what is needed to prevent plastic pollution from continuing to accumulate.
Mechanical Recycling of Thermoplastics: A Review of Key Issues
This review covers the key steps and challenges in mechanical recycling of thermoplastics, the most widely used industrial recycling method. Researchers discuss sorting technologies, decontamination processes, and how different types of plastics degrade during recycling. The study highlights strategies for improving the quality of recycled commodity plastics, engineering polymers, and bio-sourced materials to support the transition toward a circular economy.
Materials
This overview examines plastic materials derived from fossil fuels, describing common polymer types (PE, PP, PS, PA, PET, ABS, PC) and their environmental persistence as microplastics, along with the role of additives in complicating recycling. Researchers found that mechanical recycling is lower-cost but degrades material performance, while chemical recycling restores primary properties at higher expense and ecological impact.