Los Alamos lab aids efforts to reduce plastic pollution

Plastic is everywhere, and hardly anyone can get through a day without using it.

Mass-produced and mass-consumed, plastics generate mountains of trash in landfills, littering public areas and fouling the ocean — partly because much of it isn’t practical to recycle.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is part of a consortium developing a technology to rapidly break down discarded plastic at the molecular level into components that can be used to create other materials, such as nylon.

The year-old research and development effort has been dubbed BOTTLE. The program was launched in November.