"Double 11" has just passed, e-commerce sales set a new record, but because of the large-scale use of plastic packaging produced by logistics, is it also stimulating your nerves?
Now, an indisputable fact is that tiny degradable plastics lurk in the entire ocean, lakes, soil and even the air. From plankton to cockroaches, from fish to humans, they can't escape the fate of swallowing micro-plastics, and the entire ecosystem is threatened with serious health.
Cole Dewey of the Zoological Society of London and the National Geographic Institute said: "There is definitely no single solution." Scientific American magazine recently wrote that materials scientists and chemists believe that changing the nature of materials and recycling methods, It will fundamentally solve the worries caused by the widespread use of plastics.
Microplastic pollution will become a big problem
With the exponential growth of plastics production – from 200 tons in 1950 to 300 million tons per year today, it is expected to reach 33 billion tons per year by 2050, and micro-plastic contamination will become increasingly serious.
In order to control the pollution caused by micro-plastics, the world must take three main steps: in the short term, society will reduce the use of unnecessary disposable plastic items, such as water bottles, plastic shopping bags, straws, etc. In the medium term, the government needs Strengthen garbage collection to prevent plastic waste from leaking into the environment from garbage bins to landfills, and build recycling systems to increase recovery rates; in the long run, scientists need to find ways to break down plastic into the most basic units that can be remanufactured into New plastic or other materials.
At present, the plastic limit order is an effective way to reduce the use of plastic products. There is limited evidence that plastic chips are indeed reduced. However, governments that implement plastic restriction orders still have to consider simultaneously whether the costs and benefits of these initiatives are reasonable, and the environmental impact of alternative materials.
In addition, microfibers have been found in plastic polymers that are more widely used in the packaging industry, especially in disposable packaging for construction, electronics and fabrics, and this microfiber has proven to be the most prevalent form of microplastic contamination. one.
The problem of recycling comes from over-design
In Europe, plastic recycling is 30%, compared to 9% in the US. According to Dulwich, the UK's waste management system is well designed, but the utilization rate is worrying. In many Western countries, discarded plastics have nowhere to fill.
Some experts believe that a key aspect of improving recycling is to design products that make them easier to recycle. Plastics are typically re-used by comminuting, melting them and molding them into new plastics. However, in order to increase the flexibility or durability of the product, other chemicals are usually added, or simply added color, which makes it difficult to reuse or even reduce the quality of recycled plastic.
Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, said: "Even the most convenient polymers are lost because of insufficient or inappropriate design considerations."
As a potential remedy, Thompson cited the Japanese scientists' view that all polyethylene terephthalate (PET) used in plastic bottles should be transparent, and that transparent PET is easier to recycle than adding color and continues to circulate. Reuse.
To be biodegradable, it is necessary to chemically disassemble
For many years, materials scientists have been working hard to make biodegradable plastics, but many of the plastics labeled biodegradable can only be decomposed by heating at high temperatures in dedicated facilities.
University of Birmingham chemist Andrew Doff and a growing number of materials scientists have proposed physical removal of plastics and chemical disassembly to remove all contaminated impurities from recycled plastics. For example, PET is broken down into the most basic molecules, and the added chemicals are separated to provide structural units for reconstituting the original polymer. In this way, plastic will become a permanent raw material.
Some scientists are investigating ways to clean up microplastic waste because plastic particles are small and of varying nature, and the ecosystem in which they are embedded is so large.
Researchers have discovered enzymes and bacteria that can break down certain types of plastics, but there is still a need to figure out how to use these enzymes and bacteria to avoid potential negative effects, such as greenhouse gases.
There is no reason for plastics not to participate
Dorf said: "Plastic has no reason not to participate in an infinite loop, people just don't see its value."
For polymers that cannot be easily broken down into the most basic molecules, Dof believes that they should at least be chemically decomposed into molecules that can be used for different purposes, such as for fuel or pharmaceutical production. Ideally, scientists will design chemical reactions that do not require too much harsh ingredients and are less expensive. This will bring value to plastic waste that is currently of little value.
However, operations such as burning or throwing directly into landfills are obviously much cheaper, which is precisely the core of the problem.
“There is still a long way to go to create high-value products from cheap plastic waste, but that’s what we want to achieve,†says Dorf.
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