Recycling and Waste news and discussions

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caltrek
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Advanced Recycling: Plastic Crisis Solution or Distraction?
October 21, 2022

Introduction:
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP via Courthouse News) — The plastics industry says there is a way to help solve the crisis of plastic waste plaguing the planet's oceans, beaches and lands— recycle it, chemically.

Chemical recycling typically uses heat or chemical solvents to break down plastics into liquid and gas to produce an oil-like mixture or basic chemicals. Industry leaders say that mixture can be made back into plastic pellets to make new products.

“What we are trying to do is really create a circular economy for plastics because we think it is the most viable option for keeping plastic out of the environment,” said Joshua Baca, vice president of the plastics division at the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade association for American chemical companies.

ExxonMobil, New Hope Energy, Nexus Circular, Eastman, Encina and other companies are planning to build large plastics recycling plants. Seven smaller facilities across the United States already recycle plastic into new plastic, according to the ACC. A handful of others convert hard-to-recycle used plastics into alternative transportation fuels for aviation, marine and auto uses.

But environmental groups say advanced recycling is a distraction from real solutions like producing and using less plastic. They suspect the idea of recyclable plastics will enable the steep ramp up in plastic production to continue. And while the amount produced globally grows, recycling rates for plastic waste are abysmally low, especially in the United States.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/advance ... traction/
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The End of a Battery’s Life Matters as Much as Its Beginning
by Rebecca Leber
October 24, 2022

Introduction:
(Vox) Right now, the last stop in the US for many of the giant lithium batteries that power electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles is a plant in a town near Phoenix, Arizona.

There, the Toronto-based company Li-Cycle breaks the batteries down into “black mass” — a dark, shredded mess of copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium that without further processing is as useful as shiny dirt. That is, until most of it is shipped to factories in other countries to separate it into the valuable raw materials that both auto and electronics manufacturers need to build new batteries.

Soon all this will change as a new industry rises to meet the growing demand for EVs by recycling their parts in the US. Li-Cycle is one of the handful of companies in this space chasing new federal incentives for recycling. And once the company opens a new factory in Rochester, New York, next year, they’ll be capable of processing their black mass back into the raw materials automakers covet.

Recycling is often an overlooked but critical piece of a clean energy future. To address climate change, we’ll need to replace the fuels that run our homes, buildings, and vehicles with electricity powered by clean energy. Nowhere is this more important than in transportation, the US’s most polluting sector. The challenge is that each vehicle needs its own battery, complete with copper, cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite, and lithium. And because supplies of these materials are limited, it’s not at all clear how auto manufacturers will get their hands on enough for their batteries.

Part of the answer will depend on how countries handle their old EV batteries.
Read more here: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2338 ... ycling-us
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Novel Waste Treatment Efficiently Converts Sewage to Biogas
November 3, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) RICHLAND, Wash. – A new method to treat sewage can efficiently convert leftover sludge to biogas, an advance that could help communities lower their waste treatment costs while helping the environment.

Reporting in the journal, Waste Management, a Washington State University research team tested a pretreatment technology, adding an extra step to typical treatments and using oxygen-containing high pressure steam to break down sewage sludge. They found that they were able to convert more than 85% of the organic material to biogas, which can be used to produce electricity or upgraded to renewable natural gas (RNG) for the natural gas grid or for local use.

Adding the new pretreatment step improves the anaerobic conversion of sewage sludge at the wastewater treatment facility from the current less-than-50% conversion rate, and they produced 98% more methane overall compared to current practice.

“It was shown to be extremely efficient, and that’s very exciting,” said Birgitte Ahring, professor in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, who led the work. “This can be applicable and something we could begin to explore in Washington state. Not wasting waste but using its potential instead has major advantages.”

Sewage sludge is not a sought-after product. About half of the wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. use anaerobic digestion to reduce this waste, but the process, in which microbes break down the waste, is inefficient. The leftover sludge, called biosolids, generally ends up in landfills.
Read more of the EurekAlert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/970168

For a technical presentation as contained in the journal Waste Management: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ ... rch_email
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Corporate Pledges to Recycle or Reduce Plastics Aren't Translating into Less Plastic Use
November 18, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Plastic pollution is overwhelming landfills, littering Earth’s coastlines, and affecting the health of animals, including humans, while also contributing to environmental degradation and climate change. As public expectations for corporate responsibility grow and an increasing number of businesses pledge to reduce plastic use, researchers publishing in the journal One Earth on November 18 detail how the world’s largest and most powerful companies’ focus on recycling rather than virgin plastic reduction makes their commitments less meaningful.

The study focused on the top 300 Fortune 500 companies and found that 72% had made a commitment to reducing plastic pollution. “Most of the commitments emphasize plastic recycling and commonly target general plastics,” write the authors, led by Zoie Taylor Diana, an environmental researcher at the Duke University Marine Laboratory. “They are important, but partial, solutions if we are to comprehensively address the plastic pollution problem.”

“Between 1950 and 2017, plastics production increased 174-fold and is forecast to double again by 2040,” the authors write. “As of 2015, an estimated 79% of global plastic waste was in landfills or ended up in the natural environment, 12% was incinerated, and 9% was recycled. Plastics in the environment have negative repercussions at all levels of biological organization.”

The paper highlights the companies’ overwhelming focus on changing their consumption and production patterns, often by including more recycled content in their products and “lightweighting”—the practice of marginally reducing the volume of plastic used to package a particular product.
“From our literature review, we found that multiple companies, such as the Coca-Cola Company and Walmart, are producing lighter and smaller plastic products (e.g., bottles and bags),” write the authors. “This ‘lightweighting’ of plastic is considered an insufficient response because companies may reinvest this savings into markets that involve new plastic products and/or increase the total mass of plastic produced.” Because the number of plastic products increases each year, the use of this practice does not result in a net reduction of plastic.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/970860
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Magnetic Solution to Microplastics Crisis Works in Hours Not Days
by Stephen Luntz
December 2, 2022

Introduction:
(Stephen Luntz) Rather than trying to filter microplastics from wastewater, a team at Australia’s RMIT University are hoping to capture them using an absorbent powder. On its own this might leave us with nothing more than slightly larger particles to filter out. However, the authors have changed the game by making the powder magnetic.

Just how damaging microplastics are to animals or people who ingest them remains debated, but it’s unlikely the flecks of plastic we are consuming with our diet are doing us any good. Some of these microplastics form when larger items such as dumped bottles or fishing nets break down in saltwater. However, a lot of it currently escapes through wastewater, for example from washing clothes.

Unfortunately, the 'micro' part of microplastics means they currently slip through filters. Making the holes in the filters smaller can catch more microplastics, but at the cost of slowing throughput to an unfeasible extent. In the new study, PhD student Muhammed Haris, Professor Nicky Eshtiaghi and co-authors describe their alternative.

When the high surface area powder is added to microplastic-laced water, it captures even tiny pieces of plastic with close to 100 percent success. On passage through a magnetic field the powder is attracted to the magnet, bringing the plastic along for easy removal.

“Our powder additive can remove microplastics that are 1,000 times smaller than those that are currently detectable by existing wastewater treatment plants,” Eshtiaghi said in a statement.
Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/magnetic-so ... ays-66495

caltrek's comments: Maybe not "the solution" but at least part of a solution.
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'Turn Off the Tap on Plastic,' UN Chief Declares Amid Debate Over New Global Treaty
by Kenny Stancil
December 3 , 2022

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Hours before the first round of negotiations to advance a global plastics treaty concluded Friday in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, the leader of the United Nations implored countries "to look beyond waste and turn off the tap on plastic."

"Plastics are fossil fuels in another form," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted, "and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity."

Guterres' comments elevated the demands of civil society organizations, scientists, and other advocates fighting for robust, legally binding rules to confront the full lifecycle impacts of the plastic pollution crisis. A coalition of more than 100 groups has called for limiting the ever-growing production and consumption of plastic and holding corporations accountable for the ecological and public health harms caused by manufacturing an endless stream of toxic single-use items.

Petrochemical industry representatives who attended the first intergovernmental negotiating committee meeting (INC-1) for a global plastics treaty, by contrast, attempted to bolster fossil fuel-friendly governments' efforts to slow the pace of talks—convened by the U.N. Environment Program and set to continue off-and-on through 2024—and weaken proposals for action.

In the wake of this week's opening round of debate, the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) alliance launched a petition outlining what it calls the "essential elements" of a multilateral environmental agreement capable of "reversing the tide of plastic pollution and contributing to the end of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution."
Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022 ... al-treaty
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Is Plastic Recycling a Scam? Here is the Truth About the Common Practice
by Tara Yarlagadda
January 23 , 2023

Extract::
(Inverse) LAST FALL, a Greenpeace report on plastic recycling made headlines around the world when news outlets led with the publication’s striking key finding: Only five percent of plastic household waste generated in the U.S. was recycled.

Inverse spoke with experts affiliated with the report, plastic reduction advocates, as well as the recycling industry, to break down the facts behind the report and what its findings really mean for plastic recycling and consumption in the United States.

The Greenpeace report offered two key findings that media outlets reported on.

First, the overall plastic recycling rate declined to 5 to 6 percent in 2021. That’s down from a higher rate of 8.7 percent, as the EPA reported in 2018.

Second, even types of plastic that typically have higher recycling rates aren’t being recycled enough. The report finds that Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) #1 and High-density polyethylene (HDPE) #2 plastic bottles and jugs are being reprocessed at a rate of 20.9 percent, which falls below the 30 percent minimum threshold set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative to determine if materials are recyclable.
Read more here: https://www.inverse.com/science/plasti ... g-report
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