Upcycling Plastic Waste into More Valuable Materials Could Make Recycling Pay for Itself. A new and simple method for upcycling polycarbonate plastic waste at room temperature has been developed by a team of researchers at the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) at the...
Dishwasher Components Made From Recycled Plastic. Detergent bottles are frequently manufactured using recycled plastic; however, as far as higher value-added applications are concerned, these recyclates have yet to be deployed on a large scale. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for...
Salvaging Rare Earth Elements from Electronic Waste. With rising need for neodymium from several industries, attention has turned to recycling the elements found in old computers and printed circuit boards, otherwise known as e-waste or WEEE, to meet demand. But separating the valuable elements...
New Concrete Mold System Uses the Right Amount of Concrete and No More. Concrete is the world’s most widely consumed material after water, and its production contributes to more than 7% of global CO2 emissions. Achieving global ambitions to limit warming to 1.5ºC will require significant change...
Creating Solar Cells and Glass From Wood – or a billion tons of biowaste. A digital, urbanised world consumes huge amounts of raw materials that could hardly be called environmentally friendly. One promising solution may be found in renewable raw materials, according to research published in ...
Turning Plastic Grocery Bags into Sustainable Fuel. In Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy , researchers from California State Polytechnic University report using catalytic pyrolysis to turn plastic wastes into a valuable fuel source. Pyrolysis is the thermochemical decomposition of...
How Bricks Could Prove Central in the Drive to Net Zero. A Heriot-Watt University professor and co-founder of clean tech company Kenoteq , Professor Gabriela Medero, is calling for an overhaul of the construction industry during COP26, recommending an urgent shift to a circular economy...
5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Could Shape our Lives. Tech evangelists habitually brim with enthusiasm over artificial intelligence's potential to transform our lives, and the crowds at this year's Web Summit were no exception. Here are five uses for AI showcased at one of the world's largest...
Accelerating the Discovery of New Materials for 3D Printing. The growing popularity of 3D printing for manufacturing all sorts of items, from customized medical devices to affordable homes, has created more demand for new 3D printing materials designed for very specific uses. To cut down on...
Building out of Concrete, but Without Pouring Concrete. EPFL researchers have built a footbridge prototype using reinforced-concrete blocks from walls of a building being renovated. The blocks were cut into individual pieces on site and assembled into a prestressed arch. This project, which...