Scientists Discover A Cheap Way To Recycle Plastic

This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.

One of the challenges in sustainable plastics manufacturing is the simple fact that recycling plastic is expensive and resource-intensive. As a result, it’s often a lot cheaper to just produce single-use plastics, despite the long-term environmental risk they post. But that may soon change, thanks to a new technique developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The new method, which was published in the journal Science, uses specific catalysts that enable plastics to be broken down at near room temperature, significantly lowering the cost.

“This study points to a practical new solution to close the carbon cycle for waste plastic that is closer to implementation than many others being proposed,” researcher Johanne Lerceher said in a press release about the new process.

The Big Read

Five Enabling Technologies A Fusion Industry Will Need

Fusion energy needs more than a sustained fusion reaction before it can help the world produce sufficient carbon-neutral energy. The U.S. Department of Energy has identified a research and development agenda for a suite of technologies and processes to enable the ultimate clean energy technology.

Read more here.

Discoveries And Innovations

The island of Ynys Enlli, just two miles off the coast of Wales, has been named the first International Dark Sky Sanctuary in Europe as light pollution surges in the northern hemisphere.

Battery recycling company Aqua Metals announced that it’s successfully recovered high-purity lithium hydroxide at its new recycling facility in Reno, a key step to being able to scale the recycling of lithium batteries.