Upcycling of non-biodegradable plastics by base metal photocatalysis

Plastics have become indispensable in our daily lives, but plastic waste has proliferated landfills and oceans since most plastics are non-biodegradable cannot be mechanically recycled. Existing chemical recycling processes such as pyrolysis hydrogenolysis typically use high temperatures, generate unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, often require expensive noble metals, show limited generality. In addition, the latest efforts photochemical upcycling of near ambient temperatures mainly restricted to polystyrene. Here, we report a base metal photo-driven conventional polystyrene, polypropylene, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, acetate by tandem carbon–hydrogen bond oxidation/carbon–carbon cleavage reaction, with carbon recoveries up 77% selective formation valuable, isolable products including formic, acetic, benzoic acids. We successfully applied optimized conditions on copolymers, multilayered packaging, actual waste. Gram-scale reactions were demonstrated using flow photoreactor recirculation.