Recycling and Waste news and discussions

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Experts Say Decades of Recycling Hype Has Backfired Dramatically
by Michaela Barnett et. al.
July 25, 2023

Introduction:

(Science Alert) You've just finished a cup of coffee at your favorite cafe. Now you're facing a trash bin, a recycling bin and a compost bin. What's the most planet-friendly thing to do with your cup?

Many of us would opt for the recycling bin – but that's often the wrong choice. In order to hold liquids, most paper coffee cups are made with a thin plastic lining, which makes separating these materials and recycling them difficult.

In fact, the most sustainable option isn't available at the trash bin. It happens earlier, before you're handed a disposable cup in the first place.

In our research on waste behavior, sustainability, engineering design and decision making, we examine what U.S. residents understand about the efficacy of different waste management strategies and which of those strategies they prefer.

In two nationwide surveys in the U.S. that we conducted in October 2019 and March 2022, we found that people overlook waste reduction and reuse in favor of recycling. We call this tendency recycling bias and reduction neglect.

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/experts-s ... matically

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Breakthrough polymer research promises to revolutionize recycling

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-breakthro ... cling.html

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Breakthrough polymer research promises to revolutionize recycling

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-breakthro ... cling.html

Looks promising.

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Texas nuclear waste storage permit invalidated by US appeals court
Source: Reuters

August 25, 2023 9:27 PM EDT

Aug 25 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday canceled a license granted by a federal agency to a company to build a temporary nuclear waste storage facility in western Texas, which the Republican-led state has argued would be dangerous to build in one of the nation's largest oil basins.

A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission lacked the authority under federal law to issue permits for private, temporary nuclear waste storage sites. The license, which was issued in 2021 to project developer Interim Storage Partners LLC, was challenged by Texas as well as west Texas oil and gas interests that opposed the facility.

U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, writing for the court, agreed with Texas that the Atomic Energy Act does not give the agency the broad authority "to license a private, away-from-reactor storage facility for spent nuclear fuel."

Ho, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, said a license for that kind of a facility also conflicts with a U.S. law called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which prioritizes permanent storage solutions and otherwise allows temporary storage of nuclear waste only at reactors themselves or at federal sites. Representatives for the NRC, Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office and the developer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/texas-nuc ... 023-08-26/

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Genetically modified bacteria found to break down plastics in saltwater
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-genetical ... water.html
by Matt Shipman, North Carolina State University

Researchers have genetically engineered a marine microorganism to break down plastic in salt water. Specifically, the modified organism can break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a plastic used in everything from water bottles to clothing that is a significant contributor to microplastic pollution in oceans.

"This is exciting because we need to address plastic pollution in marine environments," says Nathan Crook, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University.

"One option is to pull the plastic out of the water and put it in a landfill, but that poses challenges of its own. It would be better if we could break these plastics down into products that can be re-used. For that to work, you need an inexpensive way to break the plastic down. Our work here is a big step in that direction."

To address this challenge, the researchers worked with two species of bacteria. The first bacterium, Vibrio natriegens, thrives in saltwater and is remarkable—in part—because it reproduces very quickly. The second bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis, is remarkable because it produces enzymes that allow it to break down PET and eat it.

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Marks & Spencer scraps plastic for paper bags

13 hours ago

Marks & Spencer is swapping plastic carrier bags for paper ones in all stores, in an expansion of a trial that began in 10 branches in January.

It follows other High Street stores in swapping plastic bags to paper in a bid to cut plastics use.

Supermarkets Morrisons, Waitrose and Aldi all use paper bags for customers, though some stores offer plastic bags as an option.

Marks & Spencer has more than 1,000 stores nationwide.

The retailer said it had worked with the University of Sheffield to develop a bag that is made using renewable energy, since paper is more energy-intensive to produce than plastic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66822492

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England bans single-use plastic: What is and isn’t included in the new rules?

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/10/ ... -new-rules

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Plastic Production Via Advanced Recycling Lowers Greenhouse Gas Emissions
October 12, 2023

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) Producing new plastic by advanced recycling of post-use plastic (PUP), instead of fossil-based production, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and increase the U.S. recycling rate, according to research by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. The peer-reviewed life cycle analysis study appears in the November 2023 issue of Journal of Cleaner Production.

This is the first analysis of multiple U.S. facilities taking PUP all the way to new plastics again. Specifically, the new plastics are low-density and high-density polyethylene (LDPE and HDPE, respectively). The recycling process used is pyrolysis, whereby plastics are heated to high temperatures in an oxygen-free environment. The main product is pyrolysis oil, a liquid mix of various compounds that can be an ingredient in new plastic. The oil can replace fossil ingredients like naphtha and gases to manufacture ethylene and propylene. They are two important monomers, or building blocks, for plastic production.

The study collected 2017-2021 operating data from eight companies with varying pyrolysis oil production processes. The analysis shows an 18% to 23% decrease in GHG emissions when making plastic with just 5% pyrolysis oil from PUP compared to crude oil-derived LDPE and HDPE, respectively.
When factoring in current end-of-life practices for many plastics in the U.S., such as incineration, there is a further 40% to 50% reduction in GHG emissions when manufacturing pyrolysis-based LDPE and HDPE, respectively, according to the analysis. Reductions are much higher (up to 131%) in the European Union as more PUP is currently incinerated.

“As advanced recycling becomes increasingly efficient, it is poised to play a major role in achieving global sustainability goals by reducing waste and GHG emissions,” said Argonne Principal Energy Systems Analyst Pahola Thathiana Benavides, a study author. “It can transform hard-to-recycle plastics into a multitude of high-value raw materials, reducing the need for fossil resources and potentially minimizing the environmental impact of waste management.”

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1004587

For the study as published in the Journal of Cleaner Production: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 2623030251

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Startups Aim to Turn Plant Waste Into Concentrated Carbon—and Bury It
by Matt Simon
January 16, 2024

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) In a roundabout way, coal is solar-powered. Millions of years ago, swamp plants soaked up the sun’s energy, eating carbon dioxide in the process. They died, accumulated, and transformed over geologic time into energy-dense rock. This solar-powered fuel, of course, is far from renewable, unlike solar panels: Burning coal has returned that carbon to the atmosphere, driving rapid climate change.

But what if humans could reverse that process, creating their own version of coal from plant waste and burying it underground? That’s the idea behind a growing number of carbon projects: Using special heating chambers, engineers can transform agricultural and other waste biomass into solid, concentrated carbon. Like those ancient plants captured CO2 and then turned into coal, this is carbon naturally sequestered from the atmosphere, then locked away for (ideally) thousands of years.

To be abundantly clear: Such “carbon removal” techniques are in no way a substitute for reducing emissions and keeping that extra carbon out of the atmosphere in the first place. But at the annual COP28 conference last month, carbon removal was a hotter topic than ever before. For years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has insisted that to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, we’re going to need carbon removal in one form or another, preferably a bunch of techniques working in concert.

If scaled up in the coming years, biomass carbon removal and storage could be one of those techniques.

Additional extract:

In the end, the science is very clear that in addition to reducing emissions, humanity has to figure out how to pull more carbon out of the sky. It’s not just going to be about relying on forests to capture carbon, or on enhanced rock weathering that reacts with atmospheric CO2, or on buried biomass, but ideally some combination of the best of the best techniques, both natural and technological. “We can have lots of different strategies, and they can be highly engineered, or they can be very simple,” says Parikh. “We just need to create all of these tools so that for each location and goal, we can use something to make a difference.”

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/environmen ... tartups/