Editor’s note: This article appears in the new, all-digital issue of the University of Delaware Research magazine. This issue focuses on the importance of effective communication in our lives and tips for ensuring a healthy information diet. It also covers ways faculty and students are using research to explore new worlds, including volcanoes.

Representatives of 175 nations endorsed a historic resolution at the United Nations Environment Assembly held in Nigeria in March 2022, vowing to end plastic pollution and develop an international legally binding agreement by 2024.

To be sure, plastic products offer many advantages with their lightweight construction, durability and affordable convenience.

But single-use plastic, used once and then discarded, has produced an environmental crisis for our planet.

University of Delaware researchers and collaborators are working toward a “circular” life cycle for plastics that leads not to a landfill or an ocean or a roadside, but to a long life of near-infinite use and reuse of the valuable resources and applications they represent.

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