Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of plastic could change that

To make the new material, researchers tweaked a type of vitrimer, a glasslike plastic developed in 2011, by adding molecules that change the chemical bonds holding it together. Traditional recycling methods produce dirty gray pellets (known as nurdles) that few manufacturers want to use, but this chemical recycling process creates plastic on par with brand new material. Even in the presence of these other plastics, the new material’s molecules separated out.

Source: www.sciencemag.org