(62a) Plastics Recycling Education, Research, Outreach, and Workforce Development

Plastics are widely used across industries such as food, beverage, textile, healthcare, automotive, aerospace, construction, agriculture, and petroleum. The annual production of plastics currently stands at half a trillion pounds. However, following their use, the great majority of plastics are landfilled or released into the environment, and only a small fraction of plastics is being recycled, about 5% in the US. Ample room exists for improving the current situation, so that we continue to benefit from the useful properties of plastics but reduce their undesirable impacts. By educating the public on plastics recycling, current recycling programs can be used more efficiently, and new programs can be created. [Bennett, E. M.; Alexandridis, P. Informing the public and educating students on plastic recycling. Recycling 2021, 6, 69. https://doi.org/10.3390/recycling6040069]

With an aim to engage students and educators in addressing global plastic pollution concerns related to plastic waste identification and recycling/upcycling, the authors have coordinated Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experience and Mentoring (REM) programs at their home institution, University at Buffalo (UB), The State University of New York (SUNY). The REU program engaged about thirty participants during summers 2023, 2024, and 2025, while the REM program provided structured mentoring and research experiences to a dozen K-12 and college educators during academic years 2023-24 and 2024-25. This presentation highlights activities developed and delivered at the K-12 level by REM participants with support by UB faculty mentors and graduate students. Also content developed and delivered to freshmen and sophomore community college students who had no prior exposure to research and no knowledge of plastics recycling.

With an aim to address the educational needs of workforce engineers or skilled technicians, the authors have developed on-line short courses on the “Chemical Recycling of Plastics” which provide a comprehensive (Practitioner level) and in‐depth (Expert level) review of advanced or chemical or molecular recycling of plastics. Core topics covered include an overview of different classes of chemical recycling technologies, the products they produce, and the role chemical recycling technologies play in the broader recycling, chemical, and petrochemical industries. These courses are available through the REMADE Institute [https://remadeinstitute.org/ewd/].

The authors thank all the REU and REM participants and their mentors for their contributions. The authors acknowledge the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) awards EFMA-2029375 “EFRI E3P: Valorization of Plastic Waste via Advanced Separation and Processing” and EEC-2150424 “Plastic Recycling and Advanced Chemical–physical Transformations for Improved Circular Economy Research Experience for Undergraduates program (PRACTICE-REU). The “Education and Workforce Development (EWD) on Chemical Recycling of Plastics” project was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Advanced Manufacturing Office Award Number DE-EE0007897 awarded to the REMADE Institute, a division of Sustainable Manufacturing Innovation Alliance Corp.