We want a brand new perspective on plastics. Despite important pressures to cut back using plastics and warnings of its environmental impression, plastics play an important position in reaching a sustainable world and enabling continued societal development.
Next month, the United Nations will host an occasion to mark the International Day of Awareness on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. As the UN notes, in a world the place thousands and thousands stay hungry, we lose 14% of meals produced between harvest and retail, and an estimated 17% of world meals manufacturing is wasted. In the US, according the Department of Agriculture between 30-40% of the meals provide is wasted. When that occurs, all of the sources used to supply the meals — together with the water, land, vitality, labor, and capital — go to waste. According to the USDA, the disposal of this meals loss and waste into landfills contributes considerably to greenhouse fuel emissions, with natural waste (reminiscent of meals) emitting methane because it breaks down – a fuel that’s 25 times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Without plastic packaging, meals waste can be even larger. Every 12 months within the US, about 30 to 40% of the meals we develop goes uneaten, in response to the US Department of Agriculture and the American Chemistry Council says that the longer a meals merchandise stays recent, the larger its probability of being eaten. Plastics play an important position in preserving meals and stopping loss. It helps scale back meals spoilage by offering a protecting barrier and increasing the shelf lifetime of meals, guarding in opposition to gentle, oxygen, warmth, and humidity that may degrade perishable meals and drinks. To take one instance, plastic movie can improve the shelf lifetime of meat by ten times in comparison with conventional slicing meals waste by 75%. We see comparable advantages for a wide range of foods.
Eliminating plastics would add to waste, scale back meals safety and availability, and contribute to growing the cost of meals – at a time when excessive inflation throughout nations is already stretching family budgets.
If we need to feed the world and defend the atmosphere, it’s crucial to acknowledge that plastics should proceed to have a spot in our meals programs whilst we work collectively to attenuate the fabric’s environmental impression.
Plastics waste is a rising downside.
The objective right here is rarely to downplay the well-founded environmental considerations surrounding plastic waste. Plastic waste has doubled within the final twenty years and is ready to triple again by 2060. According to the OECD, globally, solely 9% of plastic waste is recycled. The relaxation is incinerated (19%), dumped in uncontrolled websites (22%), or results in regulated landfills (50%).
Faced with a rising downside, governments have begun to behave. In 2002, Bangladesh turned the first country to ban skinny plastic baggage, reflecting their position in clogging drainage programs and inflicting or exacerbating flooding. By 2021, the European Union had banned single-use plastic plates, cutlery, and extra in addition to cups, meals and beverage containers made from expanded polystyrene, and all merchandise made from oxo-degradable plastic.
Most not too long ago, California signed SB 54 into legislation final 12 months. It’s a invoice that by 2032 would require all packaging within the state to be compostable or recyclable. It additionally requires that by 2032 100% of packaging within the State of California be recyclable or compostable, 25% of plastic packaging be lower, and 65% of all single-use plastic packaging be recycled.
As California’s new legislation acknowledges, lowering plastics is just one a part of the answer. Plastics will nonetheless be important not simply to guard meals but additionally for numerous different makes use of, together with prescription drugs for packaging tablets, medical gadgets and filtration, and important medical provide infrastructure.
Moreover, alternate options will not be essentially higher for the atmosphere. Plastic can also be typically lighter than different choices, as an example, which implies much less gasoline and decrease greenhouse fuel emissions to move it. One study calculated that changing plastic packaging in Europe with alternate options would enhance packaging mass by an element 3.6 and improve GHG 2.7 instances – by 61 million tonnes of CO2. Indeed, plastic’s gentle weight is the explanation it’s a key materials within the manufacture of electrical automobiles, the place it’s used rather than metallic to cut back mass and energy necessities. As the push for growing electrification continues, we will count on plastics utilization to extend dramatically.
We want to cut back plastic packaging, but additionally recycle extra of it. As famous in California SB-54, the laws additionally requires that 65% of all single-use plastic packaging be recycled by 2032.
A workaround that may revolutionize recycling.
Recycling, identical to discount, has its personal challenges, nonetheless.
Regulations for recycled plastic utilized in packaging meals and medicines are rightly strict as many supplies are merely unsuitable for conventional mechanical recycling infrastructures.
Mechanical recycling shreds or crushes plastic waste after which melts it to be reused however doesn’t considerably change the chemical construction. This can be utilized for PET to make drink bottles — PET is by far the most typical plastic that’s mechanically recycled.
Other varieties, nonetheless, can’t be processed this manner. For occasion, thermoset plastics are made from polymers that kind irreversible chemical bonds, which can’t be recycled. Cling movie is an apparent instance. With assortment, sorting and processing normally unable to adequately separate several types of plastic waste, lower than 10% of plastic waste finally ends up being recycled.
Since crucial properties of mechanically recycled plastics are too compromised to be used in meals packaging, virgin materials derived from fossil sources is usually required. However, there could also be a workaround.
Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology employs an industry-leading molecular conversion, pyrolysis, and contaminants administration know-how to transform waste plastic to Honeywell Recycled Polymer Feedstock. This can then be used to create new plastics. And it could actually achieve this repeatedly, breaking down waste plastic into its molecular building blocks to create a recycled polymer oil (RPO) that can be utilized to create new, virgin-quality plastic, closing the circularity loop even for food-grade plastics to each alleviate the plastic waste challenge with out shedding the constructive impression plastic affords our meals provide chains.
Crucially, the UpCycle Process Technology expands the varieties of plastics that may be recycled to incorporate coloured, versatile, and multilayered packaging, in addition to polystyrene — waste that will in any other case go unrecycled.
When used at the side of different chemical and mechanical recycling processes — together with enhancements to assortment and sorting — Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology has the potential to assist recycle almost 90% of waste plastics. This would symbolize a substantial improve within the quantity of waste plastics that may be changed into polymer feedstock.
It might be a crucial know-how in our transfer in direction of a round economic system, the place we proceed to reap the advantage of plastics for shielding meals and different makes use of — with out costing the earth.
Marc Yagoub is a Global Business Director throughout the Honeywell Sustainable Technology Solutions Group. He works at Honeywell UOP Ltd, United Kingdom, the place he’s accountable for the Advanced Plastics Recycling portfolio with particular deal with closing the plastics circularity hole and driving worth for Users.
His full profile is discovered on LinkedIn.
