Plastic remains one of the most-used materials for making many of the things we use in our everyday lives. Things made of plastic can be very strong and last a long time. They also do well in extreme heat and cold. Plastic is also much lighter than metal and can easily be formed into different shapes. This makes the material ideal for countless uses across many different industries. But the widespread use of plastics across the world is causing major problems for the environment. Plastic material is flooding landfills and causing severe damage in the world’s oceans. Plastics can take hundreds of years to break down on their own. Very few kinds are highly recyclable. This is because of the way plastics are formed. It has been estimated that even the most reusable kinds of plastic can only be recycled at a rate of 20 to 30 percent. Even when recycling is possible, the process is costly, can use a lot of energy and, in many cases, produces poor-quality materials. But a team of researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy says it has created a kind of plastic that could lead to products that are 100 percent recyclable. The team works at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. It recently reported the discovery in a study in the journal Nature Chemistry.