Nearly everyone who has ever been to a supermarket walked out with more than just the food that they purchased, they also walked out with potentially dozens of plastic bags. This is a big issue as most of the plastic bags used in supermarkets and convenient stores cannot be recycled. Although some amount of recycling is done, as many people find ways to use these bags in their homes, they inevitably end up being tossed out and many will end up in landfills. Plastic recycling is one of the key recycling issues as plastic takes hundreds if not thousands of years to biodegrade and many types of plastics are made from oil bi-products, making them doubly harmful to the environment.
This is why a recent discovery has many in the recycling game excited as a man may have found a new way to recycle plastic bags. The method takes regular throw away plastic bags like the ones found in most supermarkets and turns them into multiwalled carbon nanotubes. Vilas Ganpat Pol, who works out of the Argon National Laboratory in the United States is responsible for the method, which could be one of the most important green technologies invented in recent memory. Not only does the method turn plastic into valuable nanotubes, these nanotubes can then be used to make lithium-ion batteries.
This may be the first step in what some believe will be a valuable way to turn plastic into electronic materials that are highly valued. The process is called upcycling, which means taking waste and turning it into something of value.
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