Plastic degradation/recycling
- Submission status
- Open
- Submission deadline
Plastic degradation refers to the process of breaking down plastic materials into simpler or smaller components to reduce their environmental impact. Methods to decompose plastic material include mechanical breakdown, chemical recycling, and biodegradation. Mechanical degradation and chemical recycling aim to produce smaller particles and simpler chemical structures that can be reused to produce new material. Alternatively, biodegradation of plastics by enzymes produced by microorganisms ideally results in the metabolization of the materials; research efforts to advance this field aim to increase the effectiveness of these enzymes.
This Collection aims to attract original research that develops or employs methods to break down and recycle plastic materials by mechanical, chemical, or biological means.
Editors
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C. Marisa R. Almeida
University of Porto, Portugal
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Bipro Dhar
University of Alberta, Canada
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Jay N. Meegoda
New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
C. Marisa R. Almeida is a senior researcher at CIIMAR, participating actively in studies that aim to potentiate the use of biotechnological tools as nature-based solutions to improve and recover aquatic environments contaminated with different pollutants, including microplastics. Her expertise is on environmental chemistry applied to coastal and estuarine environments and bio and phytoremediation of contaminants in natural and constructed wetlands. Dr C. Marisa R. Almeida has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2021.
Bipro Dhar is an Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta. His research combines principles of environmental biotechnology, bioelectrochemistry, and physicochemical processes to develop advanced bioenergy, resource recovery, and biosensing technologies for waste and wastewater industries while mitigating ecological and public health risks.Dr Bipro Dhar has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2021.
Jay N. Meegoda is a Distinguished Professor of Civil and Env. Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology. His research focuses on mechanics of geo-environmental engineering where he utilized scientifically innovative concepts and engineering technologies for real world applications. Dr Jay N. Meegoda has been an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports since 2023.
