Chemical plastics recycling is ready to go

“It’s every chemical engineer’s dream to have a formula like this at hand for their process”

30-Aug-2024 - Scientists around the world can now go full throttle in their research into chemical plastics recycling. Researchers at ETH Zurich have laid important foundations for this by showing that it’s all about the stirring. Hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic waste are generated worldwide every ...

Mining rare earth metals from electronic waste

Start-up wants to turn waste into treasure

10-Jul-2024 - ETH researchers are developing a process inspired by nature that efficiently recovers europium from old fluorescent lamps. The approach could lead to the long-awaited recycling of rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are not as rare as their name suggests. However, they are indispensable for the ...

A wholly sustainable plastics economy is feasible

08-Mar-2023 - A new study shows what it will take for the plastics industry to become completely sustainable: lots of recycling combined with the use of CO2 from the air and biomass. It is also the image of plastics that need to change. Plastic is everywhere. Our society cannot do without it: plastics have ...

Breaking down plastic into its constituent parts

First step towards genuine plastic recycling

25-Mar-2022 - A team of ETH researchers led by Athina Anastasaki have succeeded in breaking down plastic into its molecular building blocks and in recovering over 90 percent of them. A first step towards genuine plastic recycling. The chemical industry has a long tradition of producing polymers. This involves ...

Highly efficient heavy metal ions filter

27-Jan-2016 - ETH researchers have developed a new water filtration system that is superior to existing systems in many respects: it is extremely efficient at removing various toxic heavy metal ions and radioactive substances from water and can even be used in gold recovery. In November, Brazil experienced an ...