(365b) Plastic Waste Accumulation Problem and Emerging Solutions

More than eight billion tons of plastic waste has been accumulated over the past 50 years. The majority (90%) of the world’s plastic waste goes directly into landfills and 3% ends up in the oceans. At the current rate, the planet will have 30 billion tons of plastic waste by 2050, and the oceans will have 250 million tons of plastics by 2025, or “one pound of plastics for every three pounds of fish”. Plastics are persistent in environment and degrade very slowly (~100 years timescale), while releasing toxic microplastics and chemicals into the landfills and oceans. This poses serious threats to our ecosystems, drinking water, and food supply. Our analysis shows that to remove the plastic waste from landfills is estimated to cost about $0.5/kg, or $4 trillion globally. To remove the plastic waste from the oceans using the state of the art technology is estimated to cost about $10¹⁸, about 10,000 times the global GDP.

Polyolefin waste accounts for about 63% of the total accumulated plastic waste. About $100 billion of post-consumer polyolefin products are consigned to landfills annually. Converting polyolefin waste into useful products can reduce the accumulated waste and associated risk to the environment. In this study we compare incineration, which is the most mature technology of reducing plastic waste, with two emerging solutions, converting polyolefin waste into (1) pristine polymers or (2) clean fuels. The results show that both solutions potentially are more profitable than incineration. Sorted polyolefin waste can be converted into pristine polymers with the highest potential profit. Mixed polyolefin waste can be converted into clean fuels with the second highest profit. The supplies of the sorted waste, however, are limited presently. Developing more efficient sorting technologies or changing the current waste management system to collect more sorted polyolefin waste should have a major positive impact on reducing the polyolefin waste accumulation.