Environmental protection: reactive and proactive approaches

Excerpt

A recent Chemical & Engineering News article (2018) provided data to show that we have failed miserably to recycle plastics wastes, according to a 2016 report of the World Economic Forum. Out of 78 million metric tons of plastics packaging produced globally, 40% goes to landfills, 32% is discarded to the environment, and only 14% is collected for recycling. Out of this 14%, 4% gets lost, 8% is recycled to lower-quality products, and only 2% is recycled for reuse for same or equivalent products. A quarter of a century ago, Take Back regulations in Europe caused producers in Europe to collect used plastic parts and incinerate them to produce energy for use. Carbon dioxide was simply released to the atmosphere. This practice counted as “recycling.” Landfilling being prohibitively expensive, and plastics recycling technologies not being available, especially for thermoplastics, merely reducing them to invisible gases was acceptable. Other problems loom as well. Nowadays, microplastics dispersion in water is an aquatic ecological concern. The proliferating use of exotic nanoparticles in plastics mix has created additional concern about health impacts when widely dispersed in the environment. In the face of all the pronouncements on plastics recycling over many years, this has to be accepted as a pitiful performance. …