Over 79 % of 6.3 billion tonnes of plastics produced from 1950 to 2015 have been disposed in landfills or found their way to the oceans, where they will reside for up to hundreds of years before being decomposed bringing upon significant dangers to our health and ecosystems. Plastic photoreforming offers an appealing alternative by using solar energy and water to transform plastic waste into value‐added chemical commodities, while simultaneously producing green hydrogen via the hydrogen evolution reaction. This review aims to provide an overview of the underlying principles of emerging plastic photoreforming technologies, highlight the challenges associated with experimental protocols and performance assessments, discuss recent global breakthroughs on the photoreforming of plastics, and propose perspectives for future research. A critical assessment of current plastic photoreforming studies shows a lack of standardised conditions, hindering comparison amongst photocatalyst performance. Guidelines to establish a more accurate evaluation of materials and systems are proposed, with the aim to facilitate the translation of promising fundamental discovery in photocatalysts design.

Recently, Pt-loaded graphic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) materials have attracted great attention as a photocatalyst for hydrogen evolution from water. The simple surface modification of g-C₃N₄ by hydrothermal methods improves photocatalytic performance. In this study, ethanol is used as a solvothermal solvent to modify the surface properties of g-C₃N₄ for the first time. The g-C₃N₄ is thermally treated in ethanol at different temperatures (T = 140 °C, 160 °C, 180 °C, and 220 °C), and the Pt co-catalyst is subsequently deposited on the g-C₃N₄ via a photodeposition method. Elemental analysis and XPS O 1s data confirm that the ethanol solvothermal treatment increased the contents of the oxygen-containing functional groups on the g-C₃N₄ and were proportional to the treatment temperatures. However, the XPS Pt 4f data show that the Pt²⁺/Pt⁰ value for the Pt/g-C₃N₄ treated at ethanol solvothermal temperature of 160 °C (Pt/CN-160) is the highest at 7.03, implying the highest hydrogen production rate of Pt/CN-160 is at 492.3 μmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹ because the PtO phase is favorable for the water adsorption and hydrogen desorption in the hydrogen evolution process. In addition, the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy data and the photoluminescence spectra emission peak intensify reflect that the Pt/CN-160 had a more efficient charge separation process that also enhanced the photocatalytic activity.