When you think of plastic, you might imagine a soda bottle, or a bag. But did you know that this soccer shirt is also made out of plastic?
Soda bottles can be recycled by making new bottles of the material. But my soccer shirt, meat packaging or carpet is often polluted by dyes and food waste, that are hard to remove. This makes them unsuitable for regular recycling, which causes them to end up in the incinerator. Therefore, we research methods to recycle plastic in a chemical way. In that process, the long molecules that make up plastics, are cut up in to smaller building blocks. These building blocks are easy to clean from the pollutions present. Afterwards, the clean building block scan be used to make new plastics. Therefore, i hope that in the future, we can use this method to give all plastic wase a new life.