Dealing with plastic that can't be recycled

Consumers have to wrangle with a sticky issue: Much of the plastic used every day can't be recycled.

And the kind of recycling that can be done is called mechanical recycling, which means that plastic that can be recycled is simply broken down to be repurposed as other plastic objects, often which are of a lower value than the original product. Eventually, objects made out of this recycled plastic, such as park benches, just end up in a landfill.

But University of Michigan chemist Anne McNeil is focusing on how to recycle previously unrecyclable plastic, using chemistry to modify the plastic into a product of equally high value to the original product.

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