Americans, on average, toss out about three quarters of a pound of plastic each day, according to researchers at Oxford University. Most of that trash winds up in a landfill. As someone who loves ...

We’ve managed to accumulate so much plastic trash that it’s daunting to think about what could be done with the tons upon tons of nonbiodegradable waste. And as much as we are trying to scale back our ...

The plastics industry has worked for decades to convince people and policymakers that recycling would keep waste out of landfills and the environment. Consumers sort their trash so plastic packaging ...

Big brands like Procter & Gamble and Nestlé say a new generation of plants will help them meet environmental goals, but the technology is struggling to deliver. Big brands like Procter & Gamble and ...

Editor’s note: This story is part of ‘Meet a UChicagoan,’ a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community. Read about the others here. When asked to explain ...

A gel that encases proteins could be a new way to safely transport medicines without requiring them to be kept cold, according to new research. To test it, the team behind the work posted themselves a ...

Bottled water is up to a hundred times worse than previously thought when it comes to the number of tiny plastic bits it contains, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...

Regulators have spent tens of millions subsidizing ‘advanced’ recycling facilities, which release carcinogens and give off more greenhouse gases than making plastic from crude oil. Last year, I became ...

A plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history. Some years back, I stopped by a French deli to buy some big chunks of cheese and carried them home in a plastic bag. The cheese was so ...

Scientists found that incorporating sugar units into polymers makes them more degradable when exposed to UV light. Many plastics that are labelled as biodegradable are only compostable under ...