Scientists Develop Highly Recyclable Plastic

New York Times (Woody) - Researchers at I.B.M. and Stanford University said Tuesday that they have discovered a new way to make plastics that can be continuously recycled or developed for novel uses in health care and microelectronics.

In a paper published in Macromolecules, a journal of the American Chemical Society, the California researchers describe how they substituted organic catalysts for the metal oxide or metal hydroxide catalysts most often used to make the polymers that form plastics...

He said the organic catalysts are “dirt cheap” to make and that I.B.M. is in discussions with pharmaceutical companies and other potential partners about developing a pilot project that could be producing plastics within two years. “It’s really a new class of polymers,” said Mr. Narayan. “I think it’s going to revolutionize synthetic chemistry.”