College of Chemistry

Image credit – Todd Cooper / jasontoddcooper.com

Geraldine Richmond (Ph.D. 80, Chem), University of Oregon’s (UO) Presidential Chair in Science and Professor of Chemistry, has been nominated to serve in the Biden administration as undersecretary for science in the...

Conceptual rendering of the ground floor entrance of Heathcock Hall looking East. (Courtesy HOK)

A $10 million commitment from Taiwan-based company Pioneer Material Precision Tech (PMP Tech) will catalyze educational opportunities for future generations of Berkeley chemistry, chemical...

With moderate heat, enzyme-laced films of the plastic disintegrated in standard compost or plain tap water within days to weeks, Ting Xu and her colleagues

“Biodegradability does not equal compostability,” says Xu, a polymer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She often finds bits of biodegradable plastic in the compost she picks up for her parents’ garden. Most biodegradable plastics go to landfills, where the conditions aren’t right for them to break down, so they degrade no faster than normal plastics.

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Only about 2% of plastics are fully recycled currently. PDK plastics could solve the single-use crisis. (Chanchai Phetdikhai/Shutterstock)

A new environmental and technological analysis suggests that a revolutionary eco-friendly plastic is almost ready to hit the shelves.

Plastics are a part of nearly every product we use on a...