Wasting resources is a huge cause of environmental degradation. At our current rate, we’re on track to 3.4 billion metric tons of solid trash by 2050. This route is completely untenable for both civilization and the overall environment, but given that roughly only 20 percent of that is currently recycled annually, we’ll need to get really creative quickly to address this issue.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge found a potential solution to this challenge by recently developing a novel process using just energy from the sun to transform plastic trash and greenhouse gasses into sustainable fuel and other valuable materials. As detailed in the journal Nature Synthesis, the team successfully created a solar-powered reactor capable of transforming CO2 into syngas, a pivotal component within sustainable liquid fuels. At the same time, the setup also managed to…