Nowadays, plastic wastes have seriously endangered human health and ecological safety. Recycling plastics is a promising ap-proach to achieve multiple uses of carbon resources. In this review, photocatalysis is introduced for the conversion of plastics into various valuable chemicals. The state-of-the-art photocatalytic techniques for plastics conversion are divided into two categories of direct and indirect photoconversion. Researchers summarize in detail the photocatalytic small organic molecules conversion from polyeth-ylene terephthalate (PET), polylactic acid (PLA) and polyethylene (PE) through the alkaline-assistant and hydrothermal pretreat-ments. Then, they overview the effective strategies of direct photoconverting PE, PLA and polyvinyl chloride into chemicals via the two-step process, amination strategy, and single reactive oxygen species-assistant strategy. Finally, they present some outlooks of the current challenges and propose some potential solutions in the future.

Nanomaterials with catalytic properties that are derived from Chinese herbs are called ‘herbzymes’. Herbzymes are nanomaterials from Chinese herbs that mimic natural enzymes like peroxidase (POD), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GPx). For a deeper understanding of herbzymes, researchers from China present a comprehensive review of different types of herbzymes and their mode of synthesis, while detailing their biomedical applications, current challenges faced, and potential directions for their development.