Science to enable sustainable plastics
Sustainable plastics are within our grasp – but more research is needed
The worst environmental impacts of plastics are a common sight in the news or on social media 鈥� but they also fulfil vital roles in society, and in some cases can even be a more sustainable option compared to alternatives.
But more research is urgently needed in order to make them fit for the future.
In November 2019, experts from China, Germany, Japan, and the UK came together at the Chemical Sciences and Society Summit (CS3) held at the 浪花直播.
Over the course of the three-day summit, they developed a plan for how to create a circular economy for plastics, preserving the crucial function they serve in society while introducing much better recyclability and reusability into their design.
On this page
Our report
Our Science to enable sustainable plastics report summarises the presentations, discussions and outcomes of the 8th CS3 meeting, held in London, UK, in November 2019. More than 30 scientists from four participating countries gathered to assess the current status of sustainable plastics, identify the most pressing research challenges in this area, and make recommendations about how the field should progress
Future sustainable technologies
Plastics are frequently demonised 鈥� often for the waste and pollution they cause 鈥� but they have benefits too.
In the future many technologies central to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels will depend on plastics. Wind turbine blades require plastic composites and adhesives, while batteries rely on plastics in their housing and may even apply them as electrolytes and other components. Plastics are also widely used in home insulation, reducing energy usage, and they play critical roles in the construction sector as pipes and conduits, cladding, seals, adhesives and gaskets.
Other future technologies such as robotics, drones, electronics, healthcare and diagnostics will also rely on the development of better plastic materials.
Plastic鈥檚 image problem exists in the production stage too, since most plastics are made from petrochemicals, the extraction of which causes pollution and the degradation of land. But in future they could be produced from more sustainable sources 鈥� such as from waste plastics or biologically sourced raw materials.
The central role of chemistry
Technical solutions are urgently needed to ensure that in future plastics can retain their useful properties, whilst having a reduced environmental impact throughout their lifespan. 浪花直播 will play a central role in delivering these solutions.
Developments in chemistry will be key to understanding and mitigating the impact of plastics in the environment. 浪花直播 can help to develop efficient ways to recycle the plastics we use today and, in the longer-term, create replacements that are made from sustainable starting materials, are more amenable to recycling at end of life, and degrade more quickly to harmless by-products if they escape into the environment.
We use plastics because they can do things other materials cannot. We have an opportunity and an obligation to think about how we can re-design plastics to make them fully sustainable and fit for purpose, both for existing applications and for those we will need tomorrow. In the process, we must aim to reduce and even reverse some of the damage plastic pollution has already caused.
Professor Charlotte Williams University of Oxford, UK
Research challenges
A key output of the report was a series of recommendations, which can be summarised as four major research challenges. These four challenges are interlinked and of equal importance.
- Understand the impact of plastics throughout their life cycles. We need a suite of technologies and assessment tools to improve sustainability throughout plastics鈥� life cycles 鈥� from obtaining raw materials and manufacturing plastics, to better recycling and disposal options and fully understanding all the environmental impacts.
- Develop new sustainable plastics. New plastics must be designed with the circular economy in mind from the design stage. That means designing polymer structures with properties that allow plastics to be manufactured, processed and recycled, with minimal negative environmental impacts.
- Closed loop plastics recycling. We need more efficient recycling processes 鈥� including in separating mixtures and composites into single pure polymers, and in enabling 鈥榗hemical recycling鈥� 鈥� that is breaking polymers down into smaller molecules for future use.
- Understand and control plastic degradation. The indiscriminate disposal of plastics into the environment must be stopped. Some degradable plastics will be needed and the focus should be on developing products that are both recyclable and environmentally degradable so they can be degraded to non-toxic biochemicals after multiple reuse or recycles. Labelling standards must also be improved.
Chemical Sciences and Society Summit (CS3)
In November 2019, more than 30 scientists from China, Germany, Japan and the UK gathered at the 浪花直播 in Burlington House, London, to assess the current status of sustainable plastics, identify the most pressing research challenges in this area, and make recommendations about how the field should progress.
The meeting was the 8th edition of the biennial Chemical Sciences and Society Summit (CS3). The CS3 brings together leading researchers to discuss how the chemical sciences can help to tackle some of the most daunting challenges that our world faces. Previous summits have tackled topics as diverse as water resources, human health, and sustainability.
The CS3 meeting in November 2019 was followed by a panel discussion hosted by BBC Environment Reporter Laura Foster. The panellists were delegates from the meeting, all leading experts in their field.
The panellists were delegates from the meeting, all leading experts in their field:
- Professor Andreas Greiner University of Bayreuth, Germany
- Professor Xianhong Wang Changchun Institute of Applied 浪花直播, China
- Professor Charlotte Williams University of Oxford, UK
- Professor Toshiaki Yoshioka Tohoku University, Japan
Explainers
A sustainable future for plastics is within our grasp. But it will require chemical scientists, policymakers, those in industry, and those from a range of disciplines to work together.
In this series of explainers, we look at some of the difficult questions around this important issue. Whether you are already a scientific expert, or you are new to this topic, you can use our handy guides to start conversations and inform yourself and those around you.
This explainer looks at the different categories of microplastic, where they come from, what their impacts can be, and how we can mitigate the harm that they cause.
This explainer takes us through how we can make more sustainable choices, and how we can improve their use and communication.
This explainer looks at the current recycling system in the UK and how it could be improved.
This explainer describes the recycling process, and some of its challenges.
In this explainer we look at what that recycling means from a chemistry point of view and compare some of the processes.
This explainer looks at how chemical scientists are maximising the positive benefits of plastics while minimising their negative effects.
This explainer looks at products described as compostable or biodegradable, when and how they should be used, and changing infrastructure to optimise their use.
This explainer looks at the method of including additives in plastics to trigger them to degrade when they are discarded and how we might ensure they will truly biodegrade in the environment.
Citizen survey
We asked people across the UK about their attitudes towards plastics, recycling and sustainability. We found that whilst a majority are concerned about the environment and keen to make environmentally-responsible decisions, many were baffled by confusing labels, a lack of sustainable product choices, and limited local recycling options.
76%
say they recycle every plastic that they can
57%
agree that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown them we need to do more to protect the planet
48%
say they don't always recycle single-use plastic packaging because labels on products don't make it clear whether it can or cannot be recycled
33%
claim that their local authority does not have recycling services for everything that is labelled as recyclable
Participants were asked if they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements. Possible options were "Strongly agree/completely agree", "Agree", "Neither agree nor disagree", "Strongly agree/completely disagree", "Don鈥檛 know".
Shown below are the totals of Strongly/completely agree answers and agree answers, and the totals of strongly/completely disagree answers and disagree answers.
All figures are from 3Gem, who surveyed a representative sample of 2,000 people from across the UK.
| Question | Agree | Disagree |
|---|---|---|
| Every plastic that I can recycle I do. | 75.7% | 8.9% |
| I don鈥檛 always recycle when I know I should. | 29.0% | 51.3% |
| I avoid buying items wrapped in plastic packaging where possible. | 47.4% | 19.0% |
| I try to only buy items in recyclable packaging. | 38.6% | 21.4% |
| It is too difficult to avoid plastic packaging. | 64.6% | 10.6% |
| I wish I could avoid plastics more but it is too difficult or time-consuming. | 50.3% | 15.6% |
| I wish I could avoid plastics more but it is too confusing. | 38.4% | 15.8% |
| I don鈥檛 always recycle because my local authority isn鈥檛 clear about what it does and does not accept for recycling. | 33.5% | 42.0% |
| My local authority does not have recycling services for everything that is labelled as recyclable. | 33.3% | 26.0% |
| Recycling plastic items is more confusing than other materials like cardboard, glass and paper. | 59.8% | 19.5% |
| I don鈥檛 always recycle because labels on the product don鈥檛 make it clear whether it can or cannot be recycled. | 47.9% | 29.1% |
| The coronavirus pandemic has shown me that we need to do more to protect the planet. | 57.1% | 12.8% |
| The increase in littering created by people improperly discarding used facemasks and PPE is creating an environmental problem for the future. | 72.0% | 5.0% |
Informed by the results of the survey, the 浪花直播 is calling for the following:
- Urgent focus on scientific research in four key areas around plastics: recyclability; degradation; measuring the impacts of plastics; designing new sustainable plastics. Read more.
- Designing plastics with sustainability as a key feature. Doing so from the start could 鈥� in the long term 鈥� lead to products that are simpler and more efficient to recycle, facilitating a circular economy for plastics.
- Improved infrastructure for processing waste plastic, in particular switching to a national strategy for recycling. This could also include introducing new infrastructure to process new, more sustainable types of plastic.
How is chemistry helping to solve the plastics problem?
Chemical scientists are working to produce more sustainable alternatives to today鈥檚 plastics. Dr Jennifer Garden from the University of Edinburgh conducts research into poly(lactic acid) (PLA), a complement to traditional plastics that can be industrially composted.
A significant problem with recycling traditional plastics is that even when they are collected and recycled properly, there is a loss in quality every time they are recycled. Poly(lactic acid), on the other hand, can be industrially composted or chemically recycled back to its constituent parts, before being remade into a new product of the same quality as the original.
Dr Jennifer Garden, University of Edinburgh
Dr Garden continues: "PLA products are commercially available, but we鈥檒l need to change infrastructure to accommodate these new types of plastics. Despite being a great option for plastics of the future, we don鈥檛 yet have the infrastructure for collecting and composting PLA products on a large scale. Chemists, product designers and local government need to start working together to ensure that these innovative solutions actually deliver on their promise."
Dr Garden explains that in future plastics need to be designed with sustainability as a main focus.
"At the moment plastics are designed purely with function in mind 鈥� whether that鈥檚 strength, flexibility, and so on. We need to start thinking of sustainability as a key necessary property of any product. If there are several materials with similar performance, we should aim to pick the most sustainable one."
- Use polymers built entirely from renewable, biologically-derived feedstock chemicals, or from wastes like CO2.
- Design more durable or longer-lasting polymers, which can be reused several times.
- Design polymers to incorporate special chemical and physical features to make them safely biodegradable on demand.
- Consider how different polymers are combined to produce various products, and how this affects recyclability. For example, many of the films used in packaging are multilayered plastics made from several different polymers. The layers must be separated in order for the plastic to be recycled, which is generally not feasible. If these structures could be simplified to a single layer, these plastics could be recycled much more easily at end of life.
How can you help?
Please help us raise awareness of this report and the challenges it identifies so that we can encourage extensive collaboration across disciplines, which will ensure sustainable plastics can benefit our whole society in the future.
To get involved you can download and share the below ready-made images and social posts within your network.
Example post: A report from chemical societies and funders of China, Germany, Japan and the UK says that improved analytics and greater understanding of the impacts of plastics is urgently needed to enable a future of #ProgressivePlastics. Read the report: