This paper reviewed the entire life cycle of plastics and options for the management of plastic waste to address barriers to industrial chemical recycling and further provide perceptions on possible opportunities with such materials.

Multilayer plastic film use increased in multiple packaging applications due to its versatility and overall increased performance over monolayer structures. However, the performance gains from multiple layers also make recycling difficult because they contain multiple polymers that can be immiscible and burdensome to traditional mechanical recycling operations. A possible solution is the solvent‐targeted recovery and precipitation (STRAP) process, but the effect on the retrieved polymer is still unknown. The STRAP process is applied to two different multilayer films and samples of recovered polymers are evaluated for physical, molecular, and thermal properties. Changes in the molecular weight are not significant, but differences in thermal properties are reported along with the coprecipitation of different polymers. Solvent retention in the polymer matrix from STRAP reduced the glass transition temperature of samples, but enhanced drying recovered it. Heavy metals, such as Cd, Cr, and Pb are not detected, indicating regulatory compliance for different applications.

The high-purity polypropylene could be produced from the waste disposable face masks via an efficient solvent-targeted recovery and precipitation (STRAP) method, combined with a simple decolorization step.