Tuesday 18 December 2018

Scientists at the University of Hull bag £1.1m to investigate plastic waste

Scientists at the University of Hull have secured a £1.1 million award to investigate and reduce plastic waste.

Funded through the government's Plastics Research Innovation Fund (PRIF), the project aims to help move the country towards a more circular economy, discover viable reprocessing methods and regenerate useful chemicals derived from post-use plastic waste.

More than 25 academics from the University of Hull will work with a wide range of companies and other organisations to develop and test a new biodegradable plastic - they aim to create a scalable and affordable material.

The project will use staff and students at the University as a test-bed for public attitudes to new plastics.

Professor Carl Redshaw said: "The scale of plastic waste in the environment and the resilience of the fossil-derived polymers used for its creation are unsustainable.

"What we need to do is to find something which degrades much quicker into biological products but has the kind of properties currently available in traditional plastics."