Plastic is notoriously difficult to recycle – currently only 12% of household plastic waste is reprocessed. The rest is either burned or goes to landfill, a situation that is made worse by the high cost of collection of these materials and the lack of recycling plants that deal with them. However, Professor Jan Baeyens and his research team have discovered a way to extract valuable chemicals from waste plastics, a process that would ease the strain on landfill sites, and would produce an output that could be sold at profit.
