Polyethylene (PE) is the most widely-produced commodity thermoplastic in the world, comprising more than 60% of the total plastic content in the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream. Approximately 100 million tons of PE are produced annually for innumerable applications, including food packaging, plastic bottles, and grocery bags. While PE thermoplastics are recyclable via melt-processing in principle, their presence in multi-component materials and mixed waste streams makes traditional recycling costly in practice. Moreover, PE is difficult to chemically recycle to monomers due to its high ceiling temperature (>600 °C), and while pyrolysis or post-polymerization modification of PE can be used to generate useful chemical building blocks or alternative materials, such strategies may create new waste streams and not reduce reliance on virgin PE. Thus, strategies to break down PE-based materials and demonstrate that the products of such processes can be repolymerized into PE-like materials with equivalent properties may be desirable.