The pathways beyond plastic waste

The latest scientific advancements in new types of plastics, recycling of plastics, Life Cycle Analysis of plastics and plastics in the ocean: these topics were discussed the 31st of January, when forty attendees gathered in the Grand Café of the Vening Meinesz building for a Science for Sustainability Café on plastic waste. During the panel discussion and audience questions that followed, light was shed on key technological and societal issues.

The challenges of plastic waste

Stefanie Ypma opened the event by illustrating the widespread problem of plastic waste in the ocean. She stated that ‘wherever you’ll look, you’ll find some plastic.’ Just as this holds true for the ocean, it also holds true for our daily surroundings. Li Shen challenged the audience in her talk on Life Cycle Analysis to think about whether they could live without plastic for a day? One brave participant raised his hand and believed he could succeed as long as he ‘did not move.’

Can you live without plastics for a day?
... Only as long as I do not move.

Turning recycling into upcycling

During the two other presentations, Ina Vollmer and Arnaud Thevenon tackled the issue of recycling plastics. The strong carbon-carbon bonds make regular plastics inert and with that hard to recycle. Arnaud spends his days researching new types of polymers that turn recycling into upcycling instead of downcycling. Ina spends her time in the lab (and even her time during the COVID pandemic in her garden) exploring new methods to break the bonds in the polyolefins to improve the recycling of regular plastics.

Although progress is being made in more efficient recycling and designing more recyclable plastics, it will take several decades to fully implement these solutions and reduce the amount of plastic entering the ocean and the environment in general. Li Shen emphasized the importance of considering the entire life cycle of plastics and new solutions. The label of biodegradability should for example be assessed under certain conditions and ‘bioplastics’ is not a uniform category of materials that can be assessed and used in a similar manner.

If I put this mug on that table, it will never magically biodegrade on its own

Social change

Towards the end of the event, the discussion clearly asked for social change. PET bottles are the best recycled plastics in our society, mainly because the deposit system allows for it. On the one hand, a motivational government policy can move society away from single use plastic bags and plastic straws. On the other hand, such convincing policy is not implemented on the plastic waste coming from the fishing industry that makes up for more than 40 percent of the plastic mass that is led into the ocean.