Food packaging plastics recycled into electricity cables

Plastics found in food packaging can be recycled to create new materials for electricity cables, claim researchers at Swansea University.

The research, published in the Journal of Carbon Research is said to focus on chemical recycling which uses the constituent elements of the plastic to make new materials.

Plastics are made of carbon, hydrogen and sometimes oxygen, and can be broken down into these elements and bonded in different arrangements to make materials such as carbon nanotubes.

Dr Alvin Orbaek White, a Sêr Cymru II Fellow at the Energy Safety Research Institute (ESRI) at Swansea University said: “Carbon nanotubes are tiny molecules with incredible physical properties. The structure of a carbon nanotube looks like a piece of chicken wire wrapped into a cylinder and when carbon is arranged like this it can conduct both heat and electricity. These two different forms of energy are each very important to control and use in the right quantities, depending on your needs.