Reimagining silicone’s life cycle

Annual global production of silicone—a synthetic polymer with a long chain of silicon and oxygen atoms—exceeds 2.6 million metric tons (1). Its manufacturing is anchored in energy-intensive processes. More than 70% of silicone’s carbon footprint stems from elemental silicon production from raw minerals (2). Compounding this issue, postconsumer silicone waste often ends up in landfills or is incinerated (3). Because of the strong silicon-oxygen bond and many additives such as organic fillers and catalysts in its formulation, decomposition of silicone into smaller molecules is challenging. On page 392 of this issue, Vũ et al. (4) report a method that breaks down postconsumer and industrial silicone waste from a cross-linked network into chlorosilane, which is a key intermediate molecule in silicone production. This depolymerization chemistry could potentially be used in large-scale silicone manufacturing processes.