Collaborate Disseminate
With the amount of plastic swirling around in the ocean, wouldn’t it be handy if the boats charged with cleaning it up could use the trash to fuel their own operations? A new study has crunched the numbers on such an approach and found that ships carry… Continue reading Can ocean cleanup boats power themselves by turning plastic into fuel?
A first-of-its-kind study led by researchers at George Washington University has measured levels of plasticizer chemicals in a number of fast food products. The findings reveal high concentrations of a number of potentially harmful chemicals, such as p… Continue reading Most US fast food found to contain potentially harmful chemicals
We are seeing some promising advances in the world of plant-based plastics, and not just from research groups at the cutting edge of materials science, but from traditional purveyors of petroleum-based plastics like Lego and Pepsi. Coca Cola’s latest m… Continue reading Coca Cola launches a bottle made from 100% plant-based plastic
[Matterhackers] has a nice video tutorial on using vacuum forming to create plastic items. Sure, you have a 3D printer, but vacuum forming has some advantages if you are making …read more Continue reading Vacuum Forming with 3D Printed Buck Tutorial
The James Dyson Award is an international competition to recognize and encourage engineering students to get creative to solve some of the most pressing problems facing the world. The national finalists from 28 regions have been announced for 2021, ahe… Continue reading Braille eBooks and mask recyclers among James Dyson Award finalists
Since it first emerged with the bold vision of cleaning plastics from the seas way back in 2013, the Ocean Cleanup Project has made many tweaks to the design of its trash-catching barriers. The latest might be the most significant one yet, with the tea… Continue reading Ocean Cleanup’s biggest system sweeps into Great Pacific Garbage Patch
We know that plastic pollution continues to build up in the ocean at alarming rates, and we know this poses a risk to the creatures that call it home, but scientists continue to dive into the complex interactions underlying this relationship. The lates… Continue reading Plastic pollution is laying “evolutionary traps” for developing turtles
Current plastic films do a great job of keeping food fresh while it sits on the supermarket shelf, but lately we’re seeing advanced forms of these materials that might play more than a passive role in preventing spoilage. A new “bioactive” material fro… Continue reading Bioactive plastic made with mango leaves protects food from bugs and UV
The battle against plastic pollution is one being fought on many fronts, but a particularly critical one centers on the material’s capacity to persist in the environment for a long time, even centuries in some cases. By tweaking the process by which pl… Continue reading Five forms of eco-friendly plastic that break down fast
3D printing is all well and good if you want one of something, but if you want lots of plastic parts that are all largely identical, you should consider injection …read more Continue reading A Plastic Injection Machine You Can Use At Home