An American Research facility has recently developed several types of plastic and recycling technologies including a process to recycle plastics into nanofibers designed to specifically target and attack fungal infection and a new method for recycling CDs into non-toxic plastics for water purification and medicine. More specifically, a team of researchers has created chemical catalyst which can be used to produce cheaper plant-based biodegradable plastics.

The current method to convert plants into biodegradable plastics imparts heavy metals into the process, these heavy metals are difficult to remove, in fact usually remain in the material and do not decompose over time. Instead this new catalyst is an organic substance that lowers the energy required for the conversion from plant to plastic. Already with this new catalyst the polluting impact considerably reduces.

Because this catalyst does not contain heavy metals the researchers claimed that it will, along with the plastic itself, in the environment. In this way it has been created an alternative to recycling plastics without a dispersion of heavy materials in the environment.

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