Workshop Description

This POLY workshop will feature experts from academia, industry, startups, national labs, and non-profits at the frontier of plastics recycling, upcycling, redesign, and sustainability. Sessions will address practical and policy challenges of scaling recycling technologies and the critical role of polymer design in overcoming barriers to circularity. Industry speakers will share perspectives on technical hurdles, market demands, and regulatory drivers for creating and integrating recycled content into new products. Researchers will discuss innovations in upcycling, dissolution, and deconstruction, focusing on catalytic and selective approaches for transforming existing plastics. In stride, mechanistic insights from theory and advanced characterization will be presented to guide process development. The workshop will also showcase recyclable-by-design and sustainability-by-design strategies, where future polymers are intentionally engineered for enhanced recyclability and reduced environmental impact.

Organizers

Brett Helms
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
bahelms@lbl.gov 

Katrina Knauer
National Renewable Energy Lab
Katrina.Knauer@nlr.gov

LaShanda Korley
University of Delaware
lkorley@udel.edu 

Megan Robertson
University of Houston
mlrobert@Central.UH.EDU

Thank you to our sponsor