We all know plastics aren’t biodegradable and that’s bad, so why can’t we just use chemical science to break them down ourselves?
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Recycling depends on the ease of breaking things down so that you can rebuild it back up. Eg., like a lego set, you can break a completed model down to its pieces, and then reuse it to make another lego set.
For aluminum, you shred it to pieces, remove unwanted pieces and melt it back to new aluminum blocks.
For paper, you shred it back into pulp, bleach it, and remake back into post-consumer paper.
Compared to other recyclables, plastic is much more complex. It has lots of different chemicals that make it up, so its much harder to break apart cleanly.
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