Plastic Upcycling

This coloring page is based on Julie's work on the chemical recycling of plastic waste to useful products using catalysts. This work was completed while she was still a postdoc in the Roman Lab at MIT through the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of the Landfills and Environment (BOTTLE) consortium. This research is based on her paper, published open access in JACS Au.

We love coming up with alternative ways to explain how our chemical reactions iwth waste plastic take place. One of the Rorrer lab's summer reserachers, Audrey Harvo is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington. She wrote and illustrated this page about her polyethylene reactions using a familiar feline analogy! Enjoy!