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Plastic waste: Challenges and opportunities

A. Ragossnig,P. Agamuthu

Published 2021 in Waste Management Research

ABSTRACT

An estimated 318 million tonnes of plastic resin is produced every year, much of it directly contributing to the 218 million tonnes of total annual solid plastic waste generation as a part of Municipal Solid Waste (year of reference: 2016). Global average plastic recycling rates are only 15%, whilst around 40% (90 million tonnes per year) is mismanaged and ultimately leaked to the environment by littering, stormwater washouts and the like. It is estimated that around 50 million tonnes per year of plastic wastes are openly burned, whilst 10 million tonnes per year enter the oceans aquatic environment. Land based sources contribute approximately 90% of plastics entering the oceans (SYSTEMIQ & PEW Charitable Trust, 2020; Lau et al., 2020). These facts show that plastic waste is one of the major challenges faced by waste managers today, everywhere on our planet. This is not only due to the high volume of plastic waste generated but also because of designed-in material properties, such as durability, low density and non-degradability. Whilst these properties are beneficial for plastic products, they are clearly undesirable in a solid waste stream, resulting in stress on existing waste management systems or challenges when introducing new waste management practices and easy leaking into the environment as well as long residence times in the environment followed by negative impacts on fauna by entanglement and finally entering the food chain (as microplastic) by mistake. The advantageous properties (from a use-phase perspective) of plastic resulted in an enormous increase of the use of plastic over the last decades — compared to the 1950’s we use more than 20 times as much plastic per year nowadays (United Nations Environmental Programme [UNEP], 2018). Besides this rapid growth of plastic consumption plastic also has entered many different sectors and nowadays is used not only for packaging purposes but also for clothing (as many textiles are made up by plastics) and in the medical sector. It is used for electronic appliances and in the automotive sector as well as in construction sector and agriculture. Any of the applications requires different properties of the materials used and by using different types of plastic polymers and, fillers and additives, plastic resins can be altered to form so-called compounds complying with the technical specifications for the respective applications regarding UV-resistance, oxygen barrier-effect, chemical and physical resistance, fire-protection as well as esthetic aspirations, such as colour and shine. Compounding also is done for economic considerations. From the resource management point of view this high variety of plastics in terms of application as well as composition comes at a high cost to society as it increases the complexity of waste management in general, and in particular for high value material recovery options. Despite all the challenges and waste management related efforts to address those it is important that we are aware that high value material recovery options pay off as a matter of the high resource value due to the high embodied energy as well as the environmental burden linked to plastics production. With regard to priority-setting and challenges the waste managers must address there are two groups of countries: (A) those with less developed waste collection and disposal systems which need to make sure to reduce leakage of plastic waste to the environment as a top priority (followed by a more recovery oriented plastic waste management approach) and (B) those countries with functioning waste collection systems in place which for the purpose of implementing circular economy should focus on making use of the resource value of plastic waste. What are the challenges and obstacles in these cases? In Case (A) mismanagement of plastic waste is the leading challenge. China, for example produced about 14 million tonnes of plastic waste per year (in 2010) and 75% of this was mismanaged. Similarly, all developing nations in Asia mismanaged 50– 75% of their plastic wastes (Jambeck et al., 2015). The major objective here is to establish effective waste collection schemes in order to minimize open burning and other leakage to the environment. Depending on the local context the use of collected plastic-(rich) waste as an alternative fuel might be a favourable option for managing the quantity of plastic waste whilst making use of the energy content of plastic at the same time. Significant investment is needed to achieve comprehensive processing and subsequent recycling of plastic wastes, so a modern recycling system is not considered feasible for the time being for Case (A) countries. Recycling options, such as using plastics as a substitute of sand or using it to pave walkways and roads should be evaluated from a sustainability point of view more in depth as to prevent leakage to the environment in an even less desired form, such as microplastics. Additionally, import restrictions for low quality plastic wastes are the right measure for developing countries to prevent additional stress on local waste management systems that are not yet fit to deal with the quality and quantity of plastic waste that cannot yet be recycled in those localities. In Case (B) one of the major challenges to be addressed is that many of the developed countries built their waste management systems around the export of plastic waste to markets (mainly in Asia) that paid the most for such material as an asset, even considering shipping costs. When in early 2018 the Chinese Central Government determined that too much of the imported materials were unusable wastes (unduly burdening their local waste management systems) instead of post-consumer recyclable plastic, those once-reliable markets were closed virtually overnight (World Trade Organization [WTO], 2017). Absent sufficient plastic recycling infrastructure at home, developed countries Plastic waste: Challenges and opportunities 1013428WMR0010.1177/0734242X211013428Waste Management & ResearchEditorial editorial2021

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