Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are joining the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment, or BOTTLE, Consortium. In collaboration with other national laboratories, ORNL scientists will support the development of new plastics that are recyclable-by-design and customize microbes and processes to break down current plastics into chemical building blocks that can be used to make higher-value products.
These efforts simultaneously aim to reduce waste in landfills and to grow the nation’s bioeconomy through renewable generation of valuable chemicals. “Plastic pollution is being found essentially everywhere researchers are looking for it,” said Greg Beckham, a senior research fellow at National Renewable Energy Laboratory and lead for the BOTTLE Consortium. “Besides accumulating in landfills and creating garbage patches in our oceans, recent work shows that microplastic particles are accumulating in our wilderness areas at an alarming rate — more than 1,000 metric tons per year are falling via wind and rain in remote areas of the Western United States.”
“The consortium’s biggest advantage is the passion each partner has in working together for the common goal of solving one of the world’s biggest environmental problems,” he added.
The BOTTLE team will work together to develop new, selective, and scalable technologies to deconstruct today’s plastic goods using a combination of chemical and biological processes. The deconstructed raw material can then be upcycled into higher-value materials or used to create new plastic goods that are designed to facilitate recycling.