Can we have plastic without pollution?
More than 90 percent of plastic across the globe is not recycled. That’s despite society being more aware of plastic pollution than ever before. In fact, not only is plastic consumption failing to decrease… Demand is increasing.
It’s not really enough to say ‘cut down on plastic use,’ because the reality is we seem to need it. The pandemic is a prime example of that. And even if we stopped all use of plastic right now, we are still looking at around 111 million tonnes of plastic waste unaccounted for by 2030, as a result of China’s decision to stop taking in the world’s exports. If all that plastic made its way into the ocean, it would be enough to cover the surface of the earth more than four times over.
So, what are we going to do about that?
Upcycling contaminated plastic
Not so long ago, millions of tonnes of Australia's waste plastic was being sent to China. Where some was, yes, recycled… But because of contamination a lot was either dumped, burned or sent to landfill, becoming pollution.
So Professor Thomas Maschmeyer and his team at the University of Sydney started seeking a solution. His speciality is in catalysis; making chemical reactions go faster.
They designed a 20-minute process that can take the types of contaminated waste China can’t handle and turn them into new products. The waste is converted to anything from milk bottles to aeroplane fuel or the coating on your takeaway coffee cup. And the process mostly runs on water and the waste itself.
“It's a very clever use of that material if I say so myself,” Professor Maschmeyer said.
He goes as far as to say plastic could be good for the environment, if we use it right.
“Because plastic is such a light material and such a clean material and so reusable, if we get it right in terms of collecting the plastic so it doesn’t end up in the environment... it’s by far the material that has the least bad ecological footprint, especially around CO2 emissions,” he said.
The big caveat is - we need to get it right. And no one’s denying that thus far, we’ve got it very very wrong. We’ve already caused a catastrophic level of pollution because of plastic, and there is no coming back from that. But going forward, Professor Maschmeyer believes plastic can operate in a circular economy, constantly being reused and upcycled at the end of its life.
But he said it's not the only solution to the plastics problem.
“I'm saying this is the solution for the existing supply chain, right? I'm not saying it's only this and everybody else has to stop. I think it's a big problem and big problems need lots of different angles of attack and biodegradable plastics are great,” he said.
While his technology might go a long way in dealing with the waste we already have, we also need to think about how we’re designing plastic from its conception. For example, does a plastic bag you’ll use only once really need to be so durable it takes hundreds of years to break down?
Designing compostable plastic
Professor Ting Xu’s team from UC Berkeley has figured out how to engineer some single-use plastics to make them compostable at home.
“I think people should not demonize plastic, they are very useful materials. It is really how you engineer them,” she said.
While biodegradable plastics exist, they still have one problem. They can take just as long as regular plastic to break down if they end up in landfill. Biodegradable plastic often needs the help of chemical processing to break down quickly.
But Professor Xu was able to create plastics that don't have that issue.
“In two days, we couldn't find it [in the compost],” she said.
She says the breaking down can also be designed to take longer.
“A huge, important part of this paper is how you molecularly manipulate the degradation process...if you want it to go away in about a couple of days or if you want it to go away in 60 days… There's a lot of options for you to choose from. At the end of the day, it depends on what you want,” she said.
For example, plastics that break down faster, might not be as sturdy during use. And for single use-plastics like a wrapper, that might be ok. While other plastics need to be designed for durability, like plastics used for solar panels.
“So the question would have to come down to: how are you going to balance the utility and the sustainability?” she said.
“And maybe if you start to look into this lifetime or life cycle of the plastic, single-use plastic should be short-lived, and other materials should be long-lived.”
Putting an end to pollution
A society without plastics is - at this point - unimaginable. The reality is that plastic is incredibly useful and it’s in everything from our solar panels to gutters, our coffee cups to clothing.
Of course, the pollution we’ve already created means we can’t really have plastic without pollution. But we can make plastics sustainable. We just need to design them better in the first instance, cut down on use where we can and figure out what to do with all those products once their job is done.
Because if we don’t, we’re trading off temporary convenience for a never-ending problem of pollution.
