Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made
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TLDR
By identifying and synthesizing dispersed data on production, use, and end-of-life management of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and additives, this work presents the first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics ever manufactured.Abstract:
Plastics have outgrown most man-made materials and have long been under environmental scrutiny. However, robust global information, particularly about their end-of-life fate, is lacking. By identifying and synthesizing dispersed data on production, use, and end-of-life management of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and additives, we present the first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics ever manufactured. We estimate that 8300 million metric tons (Mt) as of virgin plastics have been produced to date. As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12,000 Mt of plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050.read more
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Advanced approaches to produce polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) biopolyesters in a sustainable and economic fashion
Martin Koller,Gerhart Braunegg +1 more
Abstract: Abstract Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), the only group of “bioplastics” sensu stricto, are accumulated by various prokaryotes as intracellular “carbonosomes”. When exposed to exogenous stress or starvation, presence of these microbial polyoxoesters of hydroxyalkanoates assists microbes to survive. “Bioplastics” such as PHA must be competitive with petrochemically manufactured plastics both in terms of material quality and manufacturing economics. Cost-effectiveness calculations clearly show that PHA production costs, in addition to bioreactor equipment and downstream technology, are mainly due to raw material costs. The reason for this is PHA production on an industrial scale currently relying on expensive, nutritionally relevant “1st-generation feedstocks”, such as like glucose, starch or edible oils. As a way out, carbon-rich industrial waste streams (“2nd-generation feedstocks”) can be used that are not in competition with the supply of food; this strategy not only reduces PHA production costs, but can also make a significant contribution to safeguarding food supplies in various disadvantaged parts of the world. This approach increases the economics of PHA production, improves the sustainability of the entire lifecycle of these materials, and makes them unassailable from an ethical perspective. In this context, our EU-funded projects ANIMPOL and WHEYPOL, carried out by collaborative consortia of academic and industrial partners, successfully developed PHA production processes, which resort to waste streams amply available in Europe. As real 2nd-generation feedstocks”, waste lipids and crude glycerol from animal-processing and biodiesel industry, and surplus whey from dairy and cheese making industry were used in these processes. Cost estimations made by our project partners determine PHA production prices below 3 € (WHEYPOL) and even less than 2 € (ANIMPOL), respectively, per kg; these values already reach the benchmark of economic feasibility. The presented studies clearly show that the use of selected high-carbon waste streams of (agro)industrial origin contributes significantly to the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of PHA biopolyester production on an industrial scale.
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Degradation of Polyethylene and Biocomponent-Derived Polymer Materials: An Overview
TL;DR: A comprehensive review of researches on (bio)degradation of polymer materials over the last decades, various methods of polymer structure modification to increase the degree of their degradability, as well as methods of recycling post-consumer polymer materials are presented in this article.
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Biobased vitrimers: towards sustainable and adaptable performing polymer materials
TL;DR: A comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in this emerging but already very dynamic field can be found in this paper , where a classification of biobased vitrimers based on their main renewable constituent is proposed.
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Microplastic particle versus fiber generation during photo-transformation in simulated seawater.
Rahul A. Naik,Lewis Stetson Rowles,Areeb I. Hossain,Megan Yen,Ruba M. Aldossary,Onur G. Apul,Jeremy L. Conkle,Navid B. Saleh +7 more
TL;DR: To improve understanding of secondary microplastic formation, accelerated weathering has been conducted on four materials under ultraviolet radiation (equivalent to 44 days in full sun) in simulated seawater to determine degradation pathways and plastic source tracking, which can facilitate risk assessment and environmental management.
Journal ArticleDOI
Analytical methods and environmental processes of nanoplastics.
TL;DR: In this review, the state-of-the-art methods for the extraction, separation, identification and quantification of NPs in the environment are overviewed and the possible fate and transport of NPS in the Environment is thoroughly described.
References
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Jenna Jambeck,Roland Geyer,Chris Wilcox,Theodore R. Siegler,Miriam E. Perryman,Anthony L. Andrady,Ramani Narayan,Kara Lavender Law +7 more
TL;DR: This work combines available data on solid waste with a model that uses population density and economic status to estimate the amount of land-based plastic waste entering the ocean, which is estimated to be 275 million metric tons.
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Jenna Jambeck,Roland Geyer,Chris Wilcox,Theodore R. Siegler,Anthony L. Andrady,Ramani Narayan,Kara Lavender Law +6 more
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Journal ArticleDOI
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Martin Wagner,Christian Scherer,Diana Álvarez-Muñoz,Nicole Brennholt,Xavier Bourrain,Sebastian Buchinger,Elke Fries,Cécile Grosbois,Jörg Klasmeier,Teresa Marti,Sara Rodríguez-Mozaz,Ralph Urbatzka,A. Dick Vethaak,Margrethe Winther-Nielsen,Georg Reifferscheid +14 more
TL;DR: To assess the environmental risk associated with microplastics, comprehensive data on their abundance, fate, sources, and biological effects in freshwater ecosystems are needed.