Has a UC Berkeley chemistry lab discovered the holy grail of plastic recycling?

Despite the planet’s growing plastic pollution crisis, petroleum-based polymers have become an integral part of modern life. “So by making one product or two products in very high yield and at much lower temperatures, we are using some energy, but significantly less energy than any other process that’s breaking down polyolefins or taking the petroleum resources and turning them into the monomers for polyolefins in the first place,” said John Hartwig, a UC Berkeley chemist who was a co-author of the study published recently in the journal Science. Neil Tangri, science and policy director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives — an international environmental organization — said that although he was not a chemist or chemical engineer, and therefore couldn’t comment on the methods, he noted that there are broader “real world” issues that could prevent such a technology from taking off. So it’s not like we’re going to see this move into commercial production in the next year or two.” He noted that although the reaction temperature cited was lower than that used in pyrolysis — the burning of plastic for fuel — or cracking — when plastics are made from virgin material — it still requires a lot of energy, and therefore potentially creates a fairly sizable carbon footprint. It’s the realities of the economics of plastic these days.” It’s a point to which Lee Bell, technical and policy advisor for the International Pollutants Elimination Network — a global environmental advocacy group — agrees.