Plastic Waste and Recycling: Environmental Impact, Societal Issues, Prevention, and Solutions begins with an introduction to the different types of plastic materials, their uses, and the concepts of reduce, reuse and recycle before examining plastic types, chemistry and degradation patterns that are organized by non-degradable plastic, degradable and biodegradable plastics, biopolymers and bioplastics. Other sections cover current challenges relating to plastic waste, explain the sources of waste and their routes into the environment, and provide systematic coverage of plastic waste treatment methods, including mechanical processing, monomerization, blast furnace feedstocks, gasification, thermal recycling, and conversion to fuel. This is an essential guide for anyone involved in plastic waste or recycling, including researchers and advanced students across plastics engineering, polymer science, polymer chemistry, environmental science, and sustainable materials. - Presents actionable solutions for reducing plastic waste, with a focus on the concepts of collection, re-use, recycling and replacement - Considers major societal and environmental issues, providing the reader with a broader understanding and supporting effective implementation - Includes detailed case studies from across the globe, offering unique insights into different solutions and approaches

While plastics are extremely useful materials for modern society, plastics production and waste generation continue to increase with worsening environmental impacts despite international, national and local policy responses, as well as industry commitments. The first of two reports, this Outlook intends to inform and support policy efforts to combat plastic leakage.

Plastics have become one of the most prolific materials on the planet: in 2015 we produced about 380 million tonnes of plastics globally, up from 2 million tonnes in the 1950s. Yet today only 15% of this plastic waste is collected and recycled into secondary plastics globally each year. This ...

This book reviews the role of plastics in society and examines the environmental impact of different types of plastics.

This book offers a detailed presentation of the principles and practice of life cycle impact assessment. As a volume of the LCA compendium, the book is structured according to the LCIA framework developed by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO)passing through the phases of definition or selection of impact categories, category indicators and characterisation models (Classification): calculation of category indicator results (Characterisation); calculating the magnitude of category indicator results relative to reference information (Normalisation); and converting indicator results of different impact categories by using numerical factors based on value-choices (Weighting). Chapter one offers a historical overview of the development of life cycle impact assessment and presents the boundary conditions and the general principles and constraints of characterisation modelling in LCA. The second chapter outlines the considerations underlying the selection of impact categories and the classification or assignment of inventory flows into these categories. Chapters three through thirteen exploreall the impact categories that are commonly included in LCIA, discussing the characteristics of each followed by a review of midpoint and endpoint characterisation methods, metrics, uncertainties and new developments, and a discussion of research needs. Chapter-length treatment is accorded to Climate Change; Stratospheric Ozone Depletion; Human Toxicity; Particulate Matter Formation; Photochemical Ozone Formation; Ecotoxicity; Acidification; Eutrophication; Land Use; Water Use; and Abiotic Resource Use. The final two chapters map out the optional LCIA steps of Normalisation and Weighting.

My heart sank when I was approached by Dr Hastings and by Professor Briggs (Senior Editor of Materials Science and Technology and Series Editor of Polymer Science and Technology Series at Chapman & Hall, respectively) to edit a book with the provisional title Handbook of Poly propylene. My reluctance was due to the fact that my former book [1] along with that of Moore [2], issued in the meantime, seemed to cover the information demand on polypropylene and related systems. Encour aged, however, by some colleagues (the new generation of scientists and engineers needs a good reference book with easy information retrieval, and the development with metallocene catalysts deserves a new update!), I started on this venture. Having some experience with polypropylene systems and being aware of the current literature, it was easy to settle the titles for the book chapters and also to select and approach the most suitable potential contributors. Fortunately, many of my first-choice authors accepted the invitation to contribute. Like all editors of multi-author volumes, I recognize that obtaining contributors follows an S-type curve of asymptotic saturation when the number of willing contributors is plotted as a function of time. The saturation point is, however, never reached and as a consequence, Dear Reader, you will also find some topics of some relevance which are not explicitly treated in this book (but, believe me, I have considered them).