(354d) Achieving Social and Economic Justice Via Deployment of Plastic Waste Upcycling Technologies

Plastics are versatile materials that have many societal, economic, and environmental benefits; for instance, they help preserve food, insulate buildings to save energy, and make vehicles more fuel-efficient [1,2]. However, commonly-used plastics are not naturally degradable and thus must be dealt with via recycling, incineration, or perpetual storage (in landfills or in the environment) [3]. Nearly 72% of all the plastic waste produced in the world requires perpetual storage [4]. The accumulation of plastics in the environment is largely influenced by mismanagement practices and causes ecological, social, and economic problems [5,6]. In 2019, it was reported that 22% of all the plastic waste produced in the world was mismanaged. However, strong variations in mismanagement are observed in developed and developing countries; for instance 4% of the plastic waste in the United States is mismanaged, while 42% is mismanaged in Latin America [4]. These discrepancies are due to differences in infrastructure, governmental policies, and education [7]. In developing countries, the lack of proper infrastructure and legislation gives rise to social and economic justice issues (e.g., creation of “informal” waste management sectors that exploit human labor). For instance, these informal sectors require self-employed “waste-pickers” that collect, haul, sort, and sell recyclables recovered from household waste and disposal sites. Currently, the main plastic waste recovered by pickers is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is sold to large corporations (e.g., beverage companies) [8]. Despite the large demand for PET in the mechanical recycling industry, waste-pickers do not receive a fair price for the recovered materials and thus have limited income [9]. As a result, waste pickers usually work long hours to achieve a living wage [10].

Advances in waste management and recycling technologies can help achieve a more equitable welfare distribution among all stakeholders involved. For instance, recent studies have highlighted that the deployment of pyrolysis technologies and coordinated management systems can open new and profitable value chains [11-13]. In this work, we explore the economic and social benefits of integrating pyrolysis technologies into the waste management infrastructure of Mexico. Our analysis uses a computational framework that integrates techno-economic analysis, value chain analysis, and socio-economic measures. We use this framework to establish conditions under which it would make sense to deploy pyrolysis systems and how this could lead to more equitable allocation of welfare to all stakeholders involved (including waste pickers). Our analysis reveals that the deployment of pyrolysis systems can lead to more fair labor and welfare allocation. Moreover, we show how this infrastructure can bring benefits to chemical companies in the United States, which can process plastic-based pyrolysis oil produced in Mexico to manufacture virgin polymer resins and thus contribute towards a more circular plastics economy.

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[2] Evode, N., Qamar, S.A., Bilal, M., Barceló, D. and Iqbal, H.M., 2021. Plastic waste and its management strategies for environmental sustainability. Case Studies in Chemical and Environmental Engineering, 4, p.100142.

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[4] OECD (2022), Global Plastics Outlook Database. https://doi.org/10.1787/c0821f81-en

[5] Lau, W.W., Shiran, Y., Bailey, R.M., Cook, E., Stuchtey, M.R., Koskella, J., Velis, C.A., Godfrey, L., Boucher, J., Murphy, M.B. and Thompson, R.C., 2020. Evaluating scenarios toward zero plastic pollution. Science, 369(6510), pp.1455-1461.

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[7] Joshi, C., Seay, J. and Banadda, N., 2019. A perspective on a locally managed decentralized circular economy for waste plastic in developing countries. Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy, 38(1), pp.3-11.

[8] Li, H., Aguirre-Villegas, H.A., Allen, R.D., Bai, X., Benson, C.H., Beckham, G.T., Bradshaw, S.L., Brown, J.L., Brown, R.C., Cecon, V.S. and Curley, J.B., 2022. Expanding plastics recycling technologies: chemical aspects, technology status and challenges. Green Chemistry, 24, pp.8899-9002

[9] Navarrete-Hernández, P. and Navarrete-Hernández, N., 2018. Unleashing waste-pickers’ potential: supporting recycling cooperatives in Santiago de Chile. World Development, 101, pp.293-310.

[10] Botello-Álvarez, J.E., Rivas-García, P., Fausto-Castro, L., Estrada-Baltazar, A. and Gomez-Gonzalez, R., 2018. Informal collection, recycling and export of valuable waste as transcendent factor in the municipal solid waste management: A Latin-American reality. Journal of cleaner production, 182, pp.485-495.

[11] Ma, J., Tominac, P.A., Aguirre-Villegas, H.A., Olafasakin, O.O., Wright, M.M., Benson, C.H., Huber, G.W. and Zavala, V.M., 2023. Economic evaluation of infrastructures for thermochemical upcycling of post-consumer plastic waste. Green Chemistry, 25(3), pp.1032-1044.

[12] Kulas, D.G., Zolghadr, A., Chaudhari, U.S. and Shonnard, D.R., 2023. Economic and environmental analysis of plastics pyrolysis after secondary sortation of mixed plastic waste. Journal of Cleaner Production, 384, p.135542.

[13] Lubongo, C., Congdon, T., McWhinnie, J. and Alexandridis, P., 2022. Economic feasibility of plastic waste conversion to fuel using pyrolysis. Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy, 27, p.100683.