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Papers
61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to E-plastic Waste: A Review of Waste Stream Management Challenges and Opportunities for Environmental Sustainability
ClearA review on sustainable management strategies for navigating the piling e-waste crisis and associated environmental threats
This review examines the growing electronic waste crisis and its environmental and health consequences, including the release of microplastics and toxic heavy metals from discarded devices. Researchers discuss sustainable recycling approaches including bioleaching, hydrometallurgy, and biodegradation of plastic components from e-waste. The study highlights that improper e-waste disposal is an underrecognized source of microplastic pollution, particularly in developing nations where formal recycling infrastructure is lacking.
Recycling and Management of Microplastic Waste
This review examines recycling and management strategies for plastic waste, describing the technical and economic challenges of reducing plastic pollution and the remediation approaches that have been attempted to address microplastic accumulation in the environment.
Assessment, Characterization, and Bioprocessing of E-Waste Plastics in the Environment
This review explores the environmental and health challenges posed by electronic waste plastics, which contain complex mixtures of harmful chemicals. The study examines emerging biotechnological solutions such as microbial degradation and enzymatic breakdown as promising alternatives for recycling e-waste plastics, while noting that challenges related to scalability, toxicity, and economic viability remain to be addressed.
Urgency of Proper E-Waste Management Plan in Nepal: An Overview
This review examines the growing e-waste problem in Nepal, noting that inadequate disposal of electrical and electronic devices contaminates soil, water, and air with heavy metals and toxic chemicals. While focused on e-waste rather than microplastics, electronic devices contain plastic components that fragment into microplastics when improperly disposed of.
Plastic and the Environment
This chapter reviews the environmental challenges posed by plastic waste, covering the history and properties of plastics, the problems of plastic pollution, and the complexities of plastic recycling including hazardous substance propagation in electronics recycling streams.
Strategies and technologies for sustainable plastic waste treatment and recycling
This review covers current and emerging methods for recycling and treating plastic waste to reduce environmental pollution. The authors emphasize that improperly managed plastics break down into microplastics that contaminate ecosystems, and they evaluate strategies including chemical recycling, biodegradation, and energy recovery as more sustainable alternatives to landfilling.
Environmental Impact of Plastic Waste: Strategies for Sustainable Management
This systematic review summarizes the environmental and health impacts of plastic waste and evaluates strategies for sustainable management. It highlights that plastic pollution threatens ecosystems and human health through microplastic contamination, and examines approaches like recycling, biodegradable alternatives, and policy interventions to reduce exposure.
A comprehensive review of food waste valorization for the sustainable management of global food waste
This review examines methods for turning food waste into valuable products as part of sustainable waste management. While not directly about microplastics, the topic is relevant because food waste and plastic waste are often mixed together in waste streams, and food packaging is a major source of microplastic contamination. Better food waste management could help reduce the spread of microplastics that often accompany food waste into the environment.
Applications of recycled plastics and life cycle assessment
This review covers applications for recycled plastics and evaluates the environmental impact of plastic recycling through life cycle assessment. It highlights the tension between the environmental benefits of recycling and the ongoing problem of plastic waste that escapes recycling into ecosystems as potential microplastics.
Impact of Waste Management on Public Health and Environmental Sustainability
This review analyzes major waste streams including municipal, industrial, biomedical, electronic, and radioactive waste and evaluates waste management practices and their environmental and health impacts. The study discusses how improper waste handling contributes to contamination including microplastic pollution, with unmanaged landfills and open burning releasing toxins linked to adverse health outcomes.
Characteristics of microplastics and the role for complex pollution in e-waste recycling base of Shanghai, China
Researchers found extremely high concentrations of microplastics — up to 44,277 particles per 50 g in dust samples — at a formal e-waste recycling facility in Shanghai, with 103 polymer types detected, highlighting electronic waste recycling as a significant and understudied source of microplastic pollution.
A Comprehensive Review of Plastic Recycling in the Construction Industry: Challenges and Opportunities in the U.S.
Despite its title referencing plastic recycling in the construction industry, this paper reviews the barriers and opportunities for incorporating recycled plastics into building materials in the United States — not microplastic pollution itself. It examines economic, technical, and regulatory challenges for construction-sector plastic recycling and is only indirectly relevant to microplastics through the lens of reducing plastic waste at source.
Managing Plastic Waste─Sorting, Recycling, Disposal, and Product Redesign
This review covers the full landscape of plastic waste management, from sorting and mechanical recycling to chemical recycling and disposal methods. The paper highlights that landfills remain the most common disposal method despite generating microplastics and toxic leachate, while advanced recycling technologies are still too expensive for widespread use. Better management of plastic waste is directly linked to reducing microplastic pollution and its associated human health risks.
A comprehensive review on integrative approach for sustainable management of plastic waste and its associated externalities
This review examines the challenges of managing plastic waste in developing countries, where inadequate infrastructure leads to open dumping and the generation of microplastics and nanoplastics. Researchers assessed various management strategies including mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, and energy recovery approaches. The study emphasizes the need for integrated, sustainable waste management systems to reduce the environmental and health externalities of plastic pollution.
A critical review on plastic waste life cycle assessment and management: Challenges, research gaps, and future perspectives
This review examines the full environmental impact of plastics from production through disposal, noting that life cycle assessments often produce unexpected results when comparing bio-based and petroleum-based plastics. A major gap exists because microplastic pollution is not yet factored into these environmental assessments, despite growing evidence of its ecological harm.
An Examination of Microplastics: Environmental Impact, Sustainability, and Recyclability Innovation
This paper examined the environmental impact of microplastics, sustainability implications of current plastic use, and recycling options to address the plastic pollution crisis. It called for a transition toward circular economy approaches that reduce primary plastic production and increase recycled content.
The Current State of Waste Plastic and Waste Rubber Tasks for the Sustainable Society
This review discusses the state of plastic and rubber waste management challenges in modern society, covering the environmental and health harms caused by leaked plastic and rubber particles. The paper examines recycling limitations and calls for systemic changes to prevent plastic and microplastic pollution from continuing to grow.
Plastic Pollution & Solution
This review examines plastic waste management strategies across the plastic lifecycle, noting that landfilling remains the dominant approach despite its environmental and health drawbacks. It concludes that recycling and energy recovery offer better outcomes than landfilling, which is relevant to microplastics because improper disposal accelerates the fragmentation of plastics into smaller particles that enter ecosystems.
From Toxic Legacy to Circular Economy: Rethinking Ewaste Management and Its Environmental Implication
This review examines the global surge in electronic waste, analyzing the environmental and health consequences of both formal and informal e-waste disposal systems, including toxic heavy metal and microplastic contamination. The authors call for stronger regulatory frameworks and circular economy approaches to manage the fastest-growing waste stream in the world.
A comprehensive critical review of Life Cycle Assessment applied to thermoplastic polymers for mechanical and electronic engineering
This review provides the first critical analysis of how life cycle assessment methodology has been applied to technical thermoplastic polymers used in mechanical and electronic engineering. Researchers identified gaps in existing studies and highlighted the formation of microplastics during production, use, and disposal as a critical but often overlooked environmental concern. The study offers practical recommendations for improving future environmental assessments of engineering plastics.
Future aspects of micro-plastics and their management
This review covers the main types of plastic pollution and their fragmentation into microplastics that accumulate in marine environments. The authors argue that recycling, reuse, and community-level prevention strategies are essential for reducing plastic waste reaching the ocean.
Problems of environmental pollution with microplastic waste and ways to solve them
This review examines the widespread presence of microplastics in the environment and their impacts on ecosystems and human health. Researchers highlight the limitations of conventional plastic food packaging and propose sustainable alternatives including bioplastics, edible packaging, and traditional materials like palm leaves. The study provides practical guidelines for transitioning away from conventional plastics to reduce microplastic contamination.
Soil microplastic pollution in an e-waste dismantling zone of China
Researchers developed a new method to assess microplastic pollution in soils near an electronic waste dismantling zone in China. They found significantly elevated microplastic concentrations in soils around e-waste processing sites compared to control areas, with common polymers matching materials used in electronic equipment. The study identifies e-waste recycling as a previously underrecognized source of terrestrial microplastic contamination.
Sustainable Guideline for Developing the E-Waste Sector in Egypt
This guideline report addresses sustainable development of the e-waste sector in Egypt, focusing on reducing the environmental and health harms caused by informal recycling of electronic waste. Improper plastic recycling in e-waste contributes to microplastic and toxic chemical pollution.