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Waste management

Upcycling incompatible plastics

Mixed plastics are hard to upcycle because they are not all miscible with each other and deliver blends of poor quality when melted together. Now reactive additives help to make these components compatible when processed at 180 °C.

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Fig. 1: Design and use of UDCs in the melt-(re)processing of mixed plastics.

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Correspondence to Mathieu L. Lepage.

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Lepage, M.L., Gras, E. Upcycling incompatible plastics. Nat Sustain 9, 185–187 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01724-4

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