A recent innovation could make it easier to transform plastic waste into usable products.
In September 2025, the University of Delaware announced a breakthrough in hydrogenolysis, a chemical reaction that uses hydrogen gas and a catalyst to break the bonds of a molecule. In plastics, hydrogenolysis can make it easier to convert items such as grocery bags and food containers into different products. While exciting, this process is often slowed down by inefficient catalysts (which are meant to speed up hydrogenolysis).
This is where the University of Delaware comes in. A research team has taken a commonly used catalyst in plastic hydrogenolysis and made it more porous, allowing the “reaction to flow more easily,” per the team’s first author. This simple fix “enhances conversion of plastic waste into liquid fuels more quickly and with fewer undesired byproducts than current methods,” in the words of the researchers’ press release.
The development could provide an answer to one of society’s most pressing problems. While plastic has provided several benefits to key industries, its pollution is widespread and is now showing up in unprecedented places, including the floor of the Arctic Ocean, the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and even human brains.
As a result, Americans increasingly support steep measures to curb this waste. A February 2025 poll from the ocean conservation group Oceana found that 80 percent of registered voters favor state and local policies to reduce single-use plastic foam. This tracks closely with the results from a 2024 World Wildlife Fund poll, which found that over two-thirds of Americans support either placing a fee on or banning single-use plastics.
Governments, in turn, are using this public dissatisfaction to consolidate more power; eight states and several cities have banned single-use plastic bags, and others have outlawed plastic straws. California (which also has a plastic bag ban) has gone a step further and filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil for allegedly making false claims about the recyclability of its plastic products.
The University of Delaware announcement could make it harder for governments to justify top-down measures like these, but the research team still has to conduct additional R&D and further refine its catalyst before it can find an industrial partner. Luckily, the university isn’t alone in its mission to turn plastic waste into something valuable. Mexican startup Petgas is operating a pilot plant to convert styrofoam and other hard plastic into high-octane gasoline and diesel. The company claims that its fuel burns cleaner than conventional gasoline due to a lower sulfur content. Canadian startup Aduro, meanwhile, has created a regenerative chemical recycling process to upcycle common plastic waste into usable products. It hopes to scale up its technology in the near future.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline “Plastic Pollution to Practical Power.”
