Recycling plastics should be the best way for us to control our plastic waste issue but very few people ever think of doing that. There are 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste in the world and it would take years for that to decay.
Thankfully, researchers have developed a new design for plastics that would allow them to be broken down into the molecular level and be remade and reused without losing its quality.
According to a statement released by the lab, the researchers "designed a recyclable plastic that, like a Lego playset, can be disassembled into its constituent parts at the molecular level, and then reassembled into a different shape, texture, and color again and again without loss of performance or quality."
As the study's lead author Peter Christensen points out "most plastics were never made to be recycled. But we have discovered a new way to assemble plastics that takes recycling into consideration from a molecular perspective."
That's all well and good but as the article points out, it doesn't solve the current issue of plastic waste, that there are tons of it and it's plaguing the environment. Hopefully though, this new plastic design would prevent the crisis from escalating further but that too might take a while.
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