Petroleum-based plastics have replaced many natural materials in their former applications. With their excellent properties, they have found widespread uses in almost every area of human life. However, the high recalcitrance of many synthetic plastics results in their long persistence in the environment, and the growing amount of plastic waste ending up in landfills and in the oceans has become...

Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) ingest plastic marine debris of a wide range of shape, sizes and sources. To better characterize this plastic and provide insights regarding its provenance and persistence in the environment, we developed a simple method to classify plastic fragments of unknown origin according to the resin codes used by the Society of Plastics Industry. Known plastics...

The present work aims at evaluating temperature dependency of product evolution from pyrolysis of binary mixtures of low density polyethylene (LDPE), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Product distribution studies have been reported for three different mixture compositions (20:80, 50:50, and 80:20) in the temperature range of 300-600oC, for a wide range of hydrocarbon products (C5-C44) and t...