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

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 shows the true and often-underestimated market potential of plastics recycling, with analysis from economic, ecological, and technical perspectives. It is aimed at both technical and non-technical readers, including decision makers in material suppliers, plastic product manufacturers, governmental agencies, educators, and anyone with a general interest in plastics recycling. An overview of waste handling systems with a focus on the U.S. market is provided. Different methods of waste handling are compared from both economic and ecological perspectives. Since plastic waste recycling is essential from an ecological point of view, common strategies and new approaches to both increase the recycling rate and improve recycling economically and technically are presented. This includes processing and material properties of recycled plastics. Finally, a worldwide outlook of plastic recycling is provided with analysis of additional worldwide markets, encompassing highly developed, fast-developing, and less developed countries. This revised and expanded second edition also contains a new section on fiber-reinforced plastics and considerations for recycling them as well as numerous updates on the data and the context analyzed throughout the book. The spreadsheets used in the economic analyses are also offered as a bonus for the reader to download from plus.hanser-fachbuch.de/en. True to the authors’ mission, this book is printed on recycled paper.

The use of plastic materials has seen a massive increase in recent years, and generation of plastic wastes has grown proportionately. Recycling of these wastes to reduce landfill disposal is problematic due to the wide variation in properties and chemical composition among the different types of plastics. Feedstock recycling is one of the alternatives available for consideration, and Feedstock Recycling of Plastic Wastes looks at the conversion of plastic wastes into valuable chemicals useful as fuels or raw materials. Looking at both scientific and technical aspects of the recycling developments, this book describes the alternatives available. Areas include chemical depolymerization, thermal processes, oxidation and hydrogenation. Besides conventional treatments, new technological approaches for the degradation of plastics, such as conversion under supercritical conditions and coprocessing with coal are discussed. This book is essential reading for those involved in plastic recycling, whether from an academic or industrial perspective. Consultants and government agencies will also find it immensely useful.

“If you’ve ever been perplexed by the byzantine rules of recycling, you’re not alone…you’ll want to read Can I Recycle This?... An extensive look at what you can and cannot chuck into your blue bin.” —The Washington Post The first illustrated guidebook that answers the age-old question: Can I Recycle This? Since the dawn of the recycling system, men and women the world over have stood by their bins, holding an everyday object, wondering, "can I recycle this?" This simple question reaches into our concern for the environment, the care we take to keep our homes and our communities clean, and how we interact with our local government. Recycling rules seem to differ in every municipality, with exceptions and caveats at every turn, leaving the average American scratching her head at the simple act of throwing something away. Taking readers on a quick but informative tour of how recycling actually works (setting aside the propaganda we were all taught as kids), Can I Recycle This gives straightforward answers to whether dozens of common household objects can or cannot be recycled, as well as the information you need to make that decision for anything else you encounter. Jennie Romer has been working for years to help cities and states across America better deal with the waste we produce, helping draft meaningful legislation to help communities better process their waste and produce less of it in the first place. She has distilled her years of experience into this non-judgmental, easy-to-use guide that will change the way you think about what you throw away and how you do it.

The first report from the project “Improvements in existing collection and recycling systems for plastic waste from households and other municipal waste sources” is focused on describing the existing situation when it comes to collection and recycling of plastic waste in the Nordic countries. The streams covered are (all from both households and other MSW sources): • Plastic packaging waste. • Non-packaging small plastic waste. • Plastic bulky waste. Similarities and differences among the Nordic countries are presented in the report. The findings provide input into the development of suggestions for improvements. The report is part of the Nordic Prime Ministers’ green growth initiative: “The Nordic Region – leading in green growth.” Read more in the web magazine “Green Growth the Nordic Way” at www.nordicway. org or at www.norden.org/greengrowth The report for Part 2 will be published in December 2014.

Plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, aluminium cans... we all get through a lot of rubbish, but do you really know what happens after you put it in the bin? Are you even sure which bin it goes in? Recycling has never been more important – but it has also never been more complicated. Where do you put bottle lids? Why can't black plastic be recycled? What do you do with labels? The Rubbish Book answers all these questions and many more, providing you with all the information you need to become a true recycling expert, so you can help protect the planet with confidence. Written by an award-winning sustainability expert, it includes an A–Z of household items and whether they can be recycled; an in-depth look at the collection and sorting processes; a break-down of what the recycling symbols on our packaging actually mean; and an insight into the future of recycling and the new materials that will change the way we look at rubbish for ever.