The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently published its new Strategy for Plastics Innovation (SPI), which will guide DOE’s collaborative research and development (R&D) on plastic waste reduction.

The SPI builds off the Plastics Innovation Challenge launched in 2019 with a new focus on:

• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from plastics production,
• Developing new and improved plastic materials with improved end-of-life properties,
• Reimagining plastic with a focus on environmental justice and equity.

The new SPI has four strategic goals:

1. Deconstruction: Create new chemical, thermal, and biological/hybrid pathways to deconstruct plastics efficiently into useful chemical intermediates.

2. Upcycling: Advance the scientific and technological foundations that will underpin new technologies for upcycling chemical intermediates from plastic waste into higher-value products.

3. Recyclable by Design: Design new and renewable plastics and bioplastics that have the properties of today’s plastics, are easily upcycled, and can be manufactured at scale domestically.

4. Scale and Deploy: Support an energy- and material-efficient domestic plastics supply chain by helping companies scale and deploy new technologies in domestic and global markets, while improving existing recycling technologies such as collection, sorting, and mechanical recycling.

This strategy identifies key research needs and opportunities for DOE-sponsored R&D and catalogs challenges and opportunities facing SPI efforts. With a concerted and coordinated R&D effort, DOE’s SPI aims to transform its approach to plastic waste and develop new classes of plastic that are recyclable and upgradeable by design.