Plastic recycling today largely relies on mechanical recycling, which is a rather inflexible way of sorting, shredding and re-melting plastic flakes into new shapes. For example, rigid plastic bottles are commonly "downcycled" into soft fibers and other lower quality and lower value items, but never the other way round. This very limited process is the reason why global plastic recycling rates are only around 20%. However, consumers still falsely believe the "recycling symbol" on plastic items means that the plastic will be recycled.

If we utilize the chemistry behind the plastics instead, we can dramatically improve the situation. Chemical Recycling is a new paradigm that looks at the molecular structure of each of the many different plastics, converts them back into their building blocks, and then rebuilds the original "virgin-grade" material, thus enabling a Circular Economy for plastics. Some Chemical Recycling processes, however, are very energy intense and produce even more emissions than using fossil fuels in the first place. It is therefore critical to develop and choose recycling processes that minimize energy usage and offer the lowest environmental impact (e.g., CO2 emissions, toxicity) compared with traditional plastic production.

Dr. Jan-Georg Rosenboom is a Polymer Scientist from MIT, plastic sustainability consultant and co-founder of a plastic recycling startup. At MIT, he works with Prof. Robert Langer and Prof. Giovanni Traverso on polymer technologies for plastic recycling and drug delivery. He has a PhD from ETH Zurich where he developed polymerization processes based on Ring-Opening Polymerization. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx