Material Circularity: Principle No. 2 for Building a Circular Economy

Eastman

Defining the plastic waste problem

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / March 26, 2024 / Imagine all the items you've bought, used and discarded in your lifetime. How much space would they take up? What about the items discarded by your neighbors, friends and family? From cars to toys to electronics, appliances, textiles, building materials, packaging, household goods and decorations, we buy, use and discard a lot of things - many made with plastic.

And because we can place them in a trash bin or drop them at a dump, and they seem to disappear, we might not give much thought to their journey after that. Unfortunately, most will end up in a landfill, doomed forever to be "trash" or "waste" - a concept that is foreign to the natural world. And humans make so much of this waste that we are running out of landfill space around the world.

What if we could turn our old, discarded, no-longer-useful plastic into new things?

We would reduce our strain on natural resources and avoid digging giant holes and using our land to bury waste. We would reduce pollution and chemicals leaching into local environments. We would reclaim and repurpose valuable materials and reduce our carbon footprint.

Reducing our waste in these ways would do us a lot of good.

But how?

The change needed for material circularity

To change our waste story, we need to adopt a circular mindset. Our perception of what end of life means for plastic needs to change. Instead of seeing the plastic we've used as mere waste, we should recognize its inherent value and reuse it accordingly. Molecular recycling technologies allow us to unlock this value.

The potential of molecular recycling of plastic is immense. By embracing it, we can reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, mitigate the prevalence of plastic waste in our environments and landfills, create value for end-of-life plastics, and transform existing plastic back into molecular building blocks for future products. This transition would create a circular economy, reducing our dependence on natural resources and minimizing our negative impact.

Right now, mechanical recycling is the dominant method for recycling plastic, but it's limited to certain types of plastic. Others that aren't recycled or landfilled may be burned for fuel. Mechanical recycling has the lowest carbon footprint and is the most cost-effective and efficient recycling option. Wherever possible, this is the best solution.