Thursday, February 22, 2024

Outstanding plastic waste research earns prestigious Polanyi Prize

By Nicola Kelly. 

As the planet faces the pressing challenge of reducing plastic waste in the environment, new strategies for managing plastic waste are urgently needed. One of the biggest roadblocks to addressing the plastic waste crisis is the use of thermosets and rubbers — a class of non-recyclable plastics widely used in infrastructure, automobiles, planes, adhesives, 3D printing and chemical industries.

Dr. Elisabeth Prince, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, is working to address this challenge by creating more degradable and recyclable plastics. Her disruptive research in advanced materials has the potential to have a huge impact on sustainability and environmental remediation and supports Canada’s ambitious goal of achieving zero plastic waste by 2030.

In recognition of these efforts, the Council of Ontario Universities announced that Prince has been awarded the John C. Polanyi Prize. The award is presented to an individual or team whose research has led to outstanding advances in the field of natural sciences or engineering.

“I’m honoured to win this award. Many scientists that inspired me received this award early in their careers and went on to do great things, so it means a lot to be recognized as having that potential,” Prince says.

Prince explains that thermosets and rubbers have permanent bonds that prevent them from melting when heated. As a result, these materials can’t be recycled in traditional recycling processes since most recycling processes are thermally driven and involve heating, melting and remolding of plastics into new materials. Consequently, thermosets and rubbers accumulate in landfills and oceans.

As director of the Prince Polymer lab in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Prince aims to make thermosets, plastics and rubbers amenable to traditional recycling processes. She is currently investigating ways to make it possible to melt and remold thermostats and rubbers at high temperatures, without compromising their useful properties.

Her research has identified a fundamental issue with the way many chemists try to deal with this type of plastic waste. “They do not leverage the widespread infrastructure for thermomechanical recycling when designing new recycling processes or novel recyclable plastics. The plastic waste crisis is an exponentially increasing crisis and humanity doesn’t have the luxury of time to rebuild infrastructure,” she says.

In her proposed solution, Prince’s research group is making minor tweaks to the formulation of thermostats and rubbers to make these materials easily recyclable within the existing infrastructure.

The versatile approach that they are developing has the potential to allow a wide range of non-recyclable materials, including rubber tires, epoxy coatings, elastic bands, and more, to be recycled using existing infrastructure contributing toward the creation of a circular economy.

United College is finding new ways to empower future changemakers

By Rebecca Wagner. This is an excerpt of an article originally published on Waterloo News.

Giving formal academic credit and recognition for building social ventures could be game changing for students and the social innovation landscape, paving the way for many more ideas, initiatives and ventures.  

That’s why United College will launch a new minor in Social Innovation and Impact this fall. On the heels of GreenHouse’s 10th anniversary milestone, the new minor is firmly rooted in the college’s rich tradition of social justice and sustainable impact.   

Through a mix of eight courses, the new minor will formalize what was once provided in an informal, extra-curricular framework, into an academic model that includes courses like Research for Social Impact, Designing for Social Impact and Measuring and Evaluating Social Innovation for Impact. This will offer students the ability to research, define, design, launch and test social innovations for academic credit.

Recognizing that it’s one thing to learn concepts in a classroom and quite another to apply these learnings in a real-world setting, the new minor intertwines academic study and venture creation. This pedagogical framework will open social innovation up to a broader audience since academic credit will be awarded for nurturing an idea and growing a venture.   

“United College has always been keen to find new ways to contribute to the advancement of the University of Waterloo’s priorities, including its vision for Waterloo at 100 and the Global Futures initiative,” says Rick Myers, principal, United College. “Given the University’s emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, it just makes sense to leverage the expertise at GreenHouse in social innovation to build an academic program in that field.”  

A look ahead 

With an initial intake of 20 students, and plans to grow to 50 students, the minor in Social Innovation and Impact aims to create maximum social impact by embracing experiential learning and taking a deep dive into the rich tradition that the University of Waterloo is known for.         

Incoming students will be fully embraced by a community of support and will follow in the footsteps of GreenHouse alumni while forging new paths of their own.  

John Abraham, academic dean of United College, envisions the minor getting students comfortable with interdisciplinary collaboration and problem-solving as early as possible in their academic careers.  “This requires a reinvention of the traditional approach to training students, with an enhanced focus on problem-finding and a new way of learning to rise and meet today’s increasingly complex environment,” Abraham says.

Read the rest of the article on Waterloo News.

Keeping Well at Work invites to you to a Winter Warm-Up

A message from Keeping Well at Work.

Tired of dreary, grey skies, and cold weather? Shake off the winter blues with staff members Mari-Beth Davis and Donna Shin in their virtual cooking class on March 5! Join your campus community over your lunch hour to follow along and learn how to make these healthy and heart-warming recipes:

• White Bean Chicken Chili – This hearty chicken chili is a one-pot meal with rotisserie chicken and white beans that you can have on the table in under an hour!
• Fluffy Flatbread – Quick and easy flatbread made from scratch in minutes to go with your soup.   
• Roasted Cauliflower Soup – This light, fresh, and flavourful take on cream of cauliflower soup features bold Mediterranean spices for a cozy night in. (Demonstrated only)

This 1.5 hour online cooking class is complimentary. A recipe e-booklet, shopping list and instructions will be provided before the event to those who have registered by February 29 at 1:00 p.m.

Event details:

Date: Tuesday, March 5  

Time: 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.  

Location: Virtual

Hosts: Mari-Beth Davis (Alumni Relations) and Donna Shin (Co-operative and Experiential Education) 

To register for this event and others like it, visit the Keeping Well at Work website.