If we don’t bury ourselves under the mountains of plastic we’ve already created this coul be GREAT!
Marc A. Hillmyer and colleagues developed an efficient method to make a sugar-derived rubbery polyester compound called poly(β-methyl-δ-valerolactone), or PMVL, that can be used in new chemically-recyclable polyurethanes.
I’m sure you’ll recognize it from this illustration:
Using this new polymer, the researchers made flexible polyurethane foams that were comparable in performance to commercial analogs. To test whether the foams could be recycled, the team first added a catalyst, then heated the materials to a high temperature. Through this process, the researchers recovered up to 97 percent of the starting β-methyl-δ-valerolactone (MVL) monomer in high purity.
The researchers then used what they recovered to re-make PMVL with essentially identical properties.
Stannous Flouride's Book of Truthiness 