Recycling and Waste news and discussions

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caltrek
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Heating Trick Results in Plastic Waste Sucking Up Carbon Dioxide
by Mike Williams Rice
April 6, 2022

https://www.futurity.org/plastic-waste- ... 2721542-2/

Introduction:
(Futurity) The newly discovered chemical technique seems like a win-win for a pair of pressing environmental problems.

In the journal ACS Nano, researchers report that heating plastic waste in the presence of potassium acetate produces particles with nanometer-scale pores that trap carbon dioxide molecules.

These particles can be used to remove CO2 from flue gas streams, the researchers say.

“Point sources of CO2 emissions like power plant exhaust stacks can be fitted with this waste-plastic-derived material to remove enormous amounts of CO2 that would normally fill the atmosphere,” says James Tour, professor of chemistry and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University. “It is a great way to have one problem, plastic waste, address another problem, CO2 emissions.”

A current process to pyrolyze plastic known as chemical recycling produces oils, gases, and waxes, but the carbon byproduct is nearly useless, Tour says. However, pyrolyzing plastic in the presence of potassium acetate produces porous particles able to hold up to 18% of their own weight in CO2 at room temperature.
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Re: Recycling and Waste news and discussions

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caltrek wrote: Thu Apr 07, 2022 5:16 pm Heating Trick Results in Plastic Waste Sucking Up Carbon Dioxide
by Mike Williams Rice
April 6, 2022

https://www.futurity.org/plastic-waste- ... 2721542-2/

Introduction:
(Futurity) The newly discovered chemical technique seems like a win-win for a pair of pressing environmental problems.

In the journal ACS Nano, researchers report that heating plastic waste in the presence of potassium acetate produces particles with nanometer-scale pores that trap carbon dioxide molecules.

These particles can be used to remove CO2 from flue gas streams, the researchers say.

“Point sources of CO2 emissions like power plant exhaust stacks can be fitted with this waste-plastic-derived material to remove enormous amounts of CO2 that would normally fill the atmosphere,” says James Tour, professor of chemistry and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University. “It is a great way to have one problem, plastic waste, address another problem, CO2 emissions.”

A current process to pyrolyze plastic known as chemical recycling produces oils, gases, and waxes, but the carbon byproduct is nearly useless, Tour says. However, pyrolyzing plastic in the presence of potassium acetate produces porous particles able to hold up to 18% of their own weight in CO2 at room temperature.
Hopefully this works on a large scale so we can keep drilling and hell even mining other worlds in the future. ;)
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This (see article below) seems to be a separate and distinct study from the one reported upon in my March 21, 2022 post, which also concerned enzymes to digest plastic waste.

Plastic-eating Enzyme Could Eliminate Billions of Tons of Landfill Waste
April 27, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/950900

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) An enzyme variant created by engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days.

This discovery, published today in Nature, could help solve one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: what to do with the billions of tons of plastic waste piling up in landfills and polluting our natural lands and water. The enzyme has the potential to supercharge recycling on a large scale that would allow major industries to reduce their environmental impact by recovering and reusing plastics at the molecular level.

“The possibilities are endless across industries to leverage this leading-edge recycling process,” said Hal Alper, professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin. “Beyond the obvious waste management industry, this also provides corporations from every sector the opportunity to take a lead in recycling their products. Through these more sustainable enzyme approaches, we can begin to envision a true circular plastics economy.”

The project focuses on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a significant polymer found in most consumer packaging, including cookie containers, soda bottles, fruit and salad packaging, and certain fibers and textiles. It makes up 12% of all global waste.

The enzyme was able to complete a “circular process” of breaking down the plastic into smaller parts (depolymerization) and then chemically putting it back together (repolymerization). In some cases, these plastics can be fully broken down to monomers in as little as 24 hours.
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caltrek wrote: Wed Apr 27, 2022 3:29 pm This (see article below) seems to be a separate and distinct study from the one reported upon in my March 21, 2022 post, which also concerned enzymes to digest plastic waste.

Plastic-eating Enzyme Could Eliminate Billions of Tons of Landfill Waste
April 27, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/950900

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) An enzyme variant created by engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days.

This discovery, published today in Nature, could help solve one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: what to do with the billions of tons of plastic waste piling up in landfills and polluting our natural lands and water. The enzyme has the potential to supercharge recycling on a large scale that would allow major industries to reduce their environmental impact by recovering and reusing plastics at the molecular level.

“The possibilities are endless across industries to leverage this leading-edge recycling process,” said Hal Alper, professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin. “Beyond the obvious waste management industry, this also provides corporations from every sector the opportunity to take a lead in recycling their products. Through these more sustainable enzyme approaches, we can begin to envision a true circular plastics economy.”

The project focuses on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a significant polymer found in most consumer packaging, including cookie containers, soda bottles, fruit and salad packaging, and certain fibers and textiles. It makes up 12% of all global waste.

The enzyme was able to complete a “circular process” of breaking down the plastic into smaller parts (depolymerization) and then chemically putting it back together (repolymerization). In some cases, these plastics can be fully broken down to monomers in as little as 24 hours.


Wow, this would be wonderful for the environment! It would also allow us to reuse the resources we do have and probably make things cheaper in the long run...Within the same sense as space-x rockets but for plastic containers and bags.
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Turns Out All That Plastic Currently Sitting in U.S. Landfills Is Worth Billions of Dollars
by Carly Cassella
May 3, 3022

https://www.sciencealert.com/all-that-p ... ntists-say

Introduction:
(Science Alert) In 2019, the United States sent an average of US$7.2 billion dollars worth of plastic to landfill, according to new estimates from the Department of Energy (DOE).

When considering the price of manufacturing, marketing and processing all that trashed material, the costs to the economy are significant. Nor does that consider the environmental price of plastic pollution.

While landfills are often considered the cheapest way to dispose of waste, in many ways that's a shortsighted approach. Setting up a system of recycling may cost more initially, but in the long run, a circular economy of plastics could save big bucks, anywhere between US$4.5 billion and US$9.9 billion.

At the moment, recycling plastic is more expensive than making new plastic, which means companies have little incentive to dig through landfills for old materials. In many ways that's because petroleum products are so cheap, but their inexpensiveness hides a deeper cost to our planet and, down the line, our economy.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 4922002087

Abstract:
(Science Direct)…Of the estimated 44 Mt (million tons) of plastic waste managed in 2019 domestically, approximately 86% was landfilled, 9% was combusted, and 5% was recycled. Landfilled plastics represented significant losses to the country's economy in 2019: an average of US$7.2 billion in market value, about 3.4 EJ as embodied energy (equivalent to 12% of energy consumption by the industrial sector), and 1.5 EJ as an energy source (equivalent to 5.5% and 5% of energy consumption by the industrial and transportation sectors, respectively). Lastly, we posit that substantial amount of landfilled plastic
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Mine e-waste, not the Earth, say scientists

By Victoria Gill
Science correspondent, BBC News

6 hours ago

The recycling of e-waste must urgently be ramped up because mining the Earth for precious metals to make new gadgets is unsustainable, scientists say.

One study estimated that the world's mountain of discarded electronics, in 2021 alone, weighed 57 million tonnes.

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) says there now needs to be a global effort to mine that waste, rather than mining the Earth.

Global conflicts also pose a threat to supply chains for precious metals.

The RSC is running a campaign to draw attention to the unsustainability of continuing to mine all the precious elements used in consumer technology.

It points out that geopolitical unrest, including the war in Ukraine, has caused huge spikes in the price of materials like nickel, a key element in electric vehicle batteries.

This volatility in the market for elements is causing "chaos in supply chains" that enable the production of electronics. Combined with the surge in demand, this caused the price of lithium - another important component in battery technology - to increase by almost 500% between 2021 and 2022.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61350996
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Wax Worm Saliva Contains Enzymes Capable of Breaking Down Plastics
May 25, 2022

Introduction:
(Eurasia Review) A team of CSIC researchers has discovered that wax worm saliva degrades plastic; a discovery with numerous applications for treating or recycling plastic waste. Back in 2017, the team discovered that this worm species (the lepidopteran Galleria mellonella) is able to break down plastic (polyethylene), and now they have discovered just how it does this: its saliva contains enzymes (pertaining to the phenol oxidase family) that can rapidly set off polyethylene degradation at room temperature. These enzymes are the first and only known enzymes capable of degrading polyethylene plastic without requiring pre-treatment, according to Federica Bertocchini, a CSIC researcher at the CIB-CSIC (Centre for Biological Research) who led the study. The results of the work, pending review, have been published in preprint in the BioRxiv online archive. The study was partly funded by Roechling Foundation (Germany).

“For plastic to degrade, oxygen must penetrate the polymer (the plastic molecule). This is the first step in oxidation, which is usually a result of exposure to sunlight or high temperatures, and represents a bottleneck that slows down the degradation of plastics like polyethylene, one of the most resistant polymers,” explains Bertocchini. “That is why, under normal environmental conditions, plastic takes months or even years to degrade,” she adds.

“Now we have found out that enzymes in the wax worm’s saliva perform this crucial step: they oxidise the plastic. This means they can overcome the bottleneck in the plastic degradation process and accelerate its decomposition,” she adds.

Polyethylene is one of the toughest and most widely used plastics. Together with polypropylene and polystyrene, it makes up 70% of total plastic production. Plastic pollution poses a threat to the planet’s health and environment, so it is urgent to find solutions to tackle the plastic waste problem. One of the most promising research areas with the greatest potential is the biological degradation of plastics. This process is known as biodegradation and is associated with microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. However, to date, only a handful of microorganisms are known to break down the tough plastic polymers forming polyethylene. What is more, in most cases, aggressive pre-treatment is needed to guarantee oxidation and thus enable the micro-organisms to exert some effect (albeit slow) on the plastic.
Read more here: https://www.eurasiareview.com/25052022- ... -plastics/
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"Superworms" Can Happily Eat Polystrene, Offering Help To Plastic Problem
by Tom Hale
June , 2022

Extract:
(IFL Science) Superworms with an appetite for polystyrene could become a useful tool for dealing with the planet’s plastic problem. As reported in the journal Microbial Genomics, scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia have discovered that the common Zophobas morio “superworm” can happily digest polystyrene thanks to a bacterial enzyme in their gut.

To gain a deeper understanding of their plastic-munching ability, the researchers sequenced the DNA of the microbes living in the superworm gut and managed to identify the bacterial genes that code for the plastic-degrading enzymes. This knowledge, they say, could be used in the near future to screen for other bacteria that encode similar plastic degrading enzymes in their genome.

Utilizing bacterial enzymes is the key to scaling up the vision of greener plastic disposal, Dr Rinke says. As opposed to using tanks filled with hungry superworms to do the job, he believes it will be more efficient to go straight to the plastic-munching enzyme.

“We envision that polystyrene waste will be collected, mechanically shredded, similarly to what the superworms do, and then degraded in bioreactors with an enzyme cocktail. The resulting chemical compounds can then be used by other microbes to synthesize products of higher value, such as bioplastics like PHA,” continued Dr Rinke.
Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/superworms- ... em-63997

Edit: The Zophobas morio “superworm” and its plastic eating ways are also discussed in this article in Futurity: https://www.futurity.org/superworms-pla ... -2751882/
Last edited by caltrek on Wed Jun 22, 2022 3:42 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Deconstructive Chemical Pre-treatment Accelerates Microbial Decomposition of Plastics
June 12, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Washington, D.C. – June 12, 2022 – Chemical pre-treatments that deconstruct certain types of plastics can help naturally occurring microbial communities break down plastic waste more quickly, according to researchers at Michigan Technological University. The research will be presented at Microbe, the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, on June 12, 2022 in Washington D.C.

The compounds derived from the chemical deconstruction of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or polycarbonate plastics or the pyrolysis of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic can successfully sustain the growth. The genomes of microbial communities derived from multiple soils show that these organisms are capable of degrading complex carbon compounds, such as those found in gasoline, oil and plastics. Breaking up the plastic with chemical pre-treatment makes the carbon, oxygen and hydrogen from the plastic's molecular structure more accessible for bacteria to use as food.

“Bacteria grow quickly on this diet of deconstructed plastics and make more bacteria cells, effectively breaking down the plastic. We can use these plastic-fed bacterial communities to create lubricant and even protein powder, truly turning trash into treasure while taking a bite out of the plastic waste problem,” said Dr. Stephen Techtmann, associate professor of biological sciences at Michigan Tech.

Of the 6.3 billion tons of plastic made every year, 79 percent accumulates in landfills, according to the United Nations' Environmental Programme. By 2050, plastic waste will have grown 3-fold, taking tens or thousands of years to degrade. The researchers demonstrated that combined chemical and biological degradation methods may be used to effectively degrade multiple types of plastic over a relatively short period and may be a future avenue to handle rapidly accumulating plastic waste.

“These finding supported our hypothesis that the natural environment is an untapped reservoir of microorganisms capable of degrading the building blocks of plastic, and that mixed microbial communities can simultaneously degrade mixed plastic waste inputs,” said Lindsay Putman, postdoctoral fellow in the department of biological sciences at Michigan Tech, who designed and led the study.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/955661
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Enzyme in human salivary microbes decomposes PET-based plastics
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-enzyme-hu ... poses.html
by Wiley
Human saliva may contain an enzyme which can decompose the plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Researchers found the promising enzyme, a hydrolase, in a database containing human metagenome samples. As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, this newly discovered hydrolase performs better than many other known bacterial PET hydrolases. It can be produced using biotechnological methods and could be put to use in plastic recycling or for functionalizing plastics, the authors add.

Landfill sites and harbors are known to be particularly promising sites for finding bacteria that have adapted to consume or make use of plastics. These bacteria have evolved enzymes, known as PET hydrolases, which can break PET down into smaller molecules. Chayasith Uttamapinant from the Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology (VISTEC) in Rayong, Thailand, and Worawan Bhanthumnavin from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, and colleagues, have now discovered the first enzyme to decompose PET from a rather more surprising source: the genome of microbial communities in human saliva.
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