Researchers achieve stunning breakthrough using old plastic bags: 'We're turning it into a tool'

Researchers achieve stunning breakthrough using old plastic bags: 'We're turning it into a tool'

A team of researchers from Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, recently developed a shocking new technique to make the most of old plastic bags by transforming them into carbon quantum dots, or CQDs — glowing nanoparticles that can sense invisible pollutants in water. These CQDs typically rely on expensive or hazardous means to produce, but using the plastic shopping bags we often discard — after just one use — overcomes that hurdl…