(422c) Finding Strategic Solutions to Waste Plastics, Recycling and Beneficial Reuse Toward Circular Economy

Over the last 70 years, plastic usage has dramatically increased, with applications in every aspects of modern life. Plastics have transformed our society in innumerable ways and are an integral part of nearly every commercial, business and household. Some 400 million metric tons of plastics are produced worldwide each year for use in a wide range of applications, from grocery bags and water bottles to biomedical, electronic devices, and military aircraft. As it happens, there’s still a great future in plastics – analysts predict that by 2025, production of plastics will quadruple to as much as 1.5 billion metric tons per year. But the ubiquity of plastics and the lack of easy and cheap recycling techniques have resulted in waste plastics and microplastics accumulating in landfills, ocean ecosystems and encroaching on the environment, and leach into our water and food. More than 75% of the plastics produced annually are discarded after single usage. Some of these wastes are incinerated in power plants to produce electricity, which generates greenhouse gases and toxic byproducts. In 2020, about 35 million tons of plastics were produced in the U.S., but only 10% were recycled. The current linear paradigm to produce, consume, and discard after single use involves the need of a complete overhaul. To solve these problems we need to implement a circular economy in which all plastics are recovered and reused or economically recycled after use.

Finding strategic solutions to the plastic waste problem will require innovation in deconstruction and upcycling technologies, the invention of new recyclable-by-design materials, new plastic waste regulations, and public-private partnerships. In this presentation, several case-histories conducted in different countries will be described.

Key References:

Das, T.K. (2005). Toward Zero Discharge: Innovative Methodology and Technologies for Process Pollution Prevention, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.

Rahimi, A. and Garcia, J.M. (2017). “Chemical Recycling of Waste Plastics for New Materials Production”, Nature Reviews Chemistry, 1, 1-11.

Das, T.K. (2020). Industrial Environmental Management: Engineering, Science and Policy, 1e, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.

Abbott, R. (2021). “Advancing a Circular Economy”, Special Issue on “Waste Plastics Recycling” in Chemical Engineering Progress, July, 25-41, New York, NY.