Designer plastic can be recycled over and over again

Bicyclic thiolactone building block makes for high-quality polymers with chemical recyclability. An entirely new class of polymers that matches popular plastics’ thermal and mechanical properties but has the potential to be recycled and reused indefinitely has been developed by scientists in the US, China and Saudi Arabia. Plastic pollution is one of the greatest environmental problems of our time, so creating polymers that can be turned back into their monomer building blocks for reuse is an important goal in materials science. But designing chemically recyclable plastics with desirable properties remains challenging.