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Circular economy for plastic waste management

IWA Publishing eBooks 2023 2 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 30 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.

Pawan Kumar Srikanth, Pawan Kumar Srikanth, Pawan Kumar Srikanth, Pawan Kumar Srikanth, Chettiyappan Visvanathan, Chettiyappan Visvanathan Chettiyappan Visvanathan Chettiyappan Visvanathan, Chettiyappan Visvanathan Chettiyappan Visvanathan Chettiyappan Visvanathan

Summary

This overview chapter discusses circular economy approaches for plastic waste management, covering the history of plastic production and why strong carbon-carbon bonds make plastics so resistant to biological degradation. The chapter argues for redesigning plastic use and recycling systems to prevent plastic from fragmenting into persistent microplastics.

Polymers

Circular economy for plastic 'Bakelite' was invented in 1907 in New York by Leo Baekeland. Plastics are organic materials that are highly resistant to microbial action due to the strong carbon-carbon bonds. Chemically, most plastics are derived from propylene, a simple chemical constituent of petroleum. In the presence of a catalyst, the simple monomeric units of propylene bond with a strong carbon-carbon bond to form polypropylene. It takes more than 400-500 years for the microbes to degrade it. Hence, it is obvious that all the mismanaged plastic waste is still in existence The dominant use of single-use plastic products (SUPP) is observed in the packaging sector.

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