Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) announced last December that they have developed new technology that turns non-biodegradable plastic waste into valuable chemicals using sunlight. The technology has attracted attention as a new environmentally friendly method. As the environmental destruction caused by ocean dumping becomes more serious, efforts to dispose of plastic waste have begun on a global scale.

Dissolving plastic using fossil fuels is one technique for converting plastic into useful chemicals, but fossil fuels produce greenhouse gases. Photoreforming, which generates hydrogen gas from plastic with water and sunlight, uses a toxic catalyst (cadmium). In contrast, NTU's method uses solar energy to convert plastic waste into formic acid using vanadium as a photocatalyst. Vanadium is inexpensive and environmentally friendly. Formic acid is used in fuel cells for hydrogen enery and as an antibacterial cleaning agent. In addition, according to NTU's experiments, plastic degradation was achieved in six days, a shorter time compared to other methods.