Redefining Plastic Waste as a Sustainable Feedstock: Valorization and Chemical Sorting into Value-Added α-Hydroxy Acids

A base breaks polyester and polycarbonate plastics into small molecules, and an iridium catalyst couples them with alcohols into α-hydroxy acids in one pot. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations trace why the plastics prefer different alcohols, so unsorted mixtures separate chemically into distinct products.