Geoffrey Coates, center, in his lab with James Eagan, a postdoctoral researcher in Coates’ group and researcher Anne LaPointe. Credit: Robert Barker/University Photography
When Geoffrey Coates, Tisch University Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, gives a talk about plastics and recycling, he usually opens with this question: What percentage of the 78 million tons of plastic used annually for packaging – for example, a 2-liter bottle or a take-out food container – actually gets recycled and reused in a similar way? The answer is just 2%. Sadly, nearly a third is leaked into the environment, around 14% is used in incineration and/or energy recovery, and a whopping 40% winds up in landfills.
One of the problems: Polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), 2/3 of the world’s plastic...
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