Most plastic packaging is not recyclable and adds to waste pollution. But plastic is doing much more to harm the planet than sitting in landfills for decades and polluting our oceans. Creating plastics requires fossil fuels, emitting large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Thanks to dyes and additives, many of the plastics in use today are un-recyclable. 

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A research team led by Vinothan N. Manoharan, Wagner Family Professor of Chemical Engineering and Physics, and Audrey von Raesfeld, a PhD student in Applied Physics, is taking an innovative approach to enabling a circular plastic economy. The team has demonstrated that introducing microscopic structures into plastic films can lead to performance that previously required the addition of dyes to packaging. 

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The dyes and additives that render many plastics unrecyclable are necessary to improve food stability by protecting the food from damaging environmental stimuli like light or gases. By manipulating the structure of the films without altering their composition, the team aims to maintain the protective properties of the packaging while also retaining the recyclability of the base plastics. To ensure this technology can succeed and deploy rapidly, researchers aim to fabricate these films in a way that integrates with established manufacturing techniques.