Upcycling plastic waste toward sustainable energy storage: Simple process transforms PET plastic into a nanomaterial for energy storage

Engineering professors and their students have been working for years on creating improved energy storage materials from sustainable sources, such as glass bottles, beach sand, Silly Putty, and portabella mushrooms. Now they have turned plastic soda bottles into a nanomaterial for use in batteries. Though they don't store as much energy as lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors made with the material can charge much faster.