Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. It was hailed as a wonderful thing: During the oil boom in the 1950s, chemists began to render the waste coming out of refineries ...

Seeing plastic trash while hiking inspired a Rutgers chemist to rethink why synthetic plastics last forever while natural polymers don’t. By mimicking tiny structural features used in DNA and proteins ...

We're surrounded by plastics and other synthetic chemicals. Are you aware of these less obvious sources?

Plastics are widely used but difficult to degrade, posing an ecological challenge. A team from SIAT developed degradable "living plastics" using synthetic biology and polymer engineering. They ...

Bottles and bags, food wrappers and straws. Piping, packaging, toys and trays. Plastic is everywhere — and yet some people may be surprised at how much they actually wear. A typical closet is loaded ...