One ordinary chemical unzips acrylic glass back into pure raw material — no solvents, half the heat

Acrylic glass — the clear, tough plastic in windows, car lights and screens — is made by the millions of tonnes, yet most of it is burned or buried because unmaking it took fierce heat and messy solvents. At ETH Zurich in Switzerland, Professor Athina Anastasaki's team, publishing in Nature Chemistry, found that a single cheap, widely available chemical can break acrylic glass almost completely back into its original building blocks: up to 98% recovered, pure enough to make brand-new acrylic of the same quality, starting at just over 200°C instead of 400°C, with no solvents at all. ETH has filed a patent, and because factories could use their existing equipment, the chemical industry is already interested.

SDG 12 · Responsible consumption and production — Mechanism: tech innovation