Plastics Can Be Broken Down in to Fuel, And We Just Found a Great Method For It 23 APRIL 2021 If you didn't know already, we have bad news - the plastic recycling industry is severely under-performing. Only 9 percent of plastic waste ever produced has been recycled. Around 12 percent has been burnt, leaving 79 percent of all plastic ever produced still out there in the world.
While we work out how to be less reliant on these materials, researchers have also been investigating how to reuse one of the most common types of plastic – polyolefin – by turning it into fuel. "Single-use plastics impose an enormous environmental threat, but their recycling, especially of polyolefins, has been proven challenging," researchers from the University of Delaware (UD) write in a new paper.