Open AccessCan Non-Recyclable Plastic Waste Be Made Environmentally Sustainable?
Author(s) -
Luigí Campanella,
Pino Suffritti
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
substantia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2532-3997
DOI - 10.36253/substantia-1287
Subject(s) - waste management , carbonization , resource recovery , environmentally friendly , charcoal , inert , resource (disambiguation) , environmental science , resource depletion , engineering , chemistry , adsorption , wastewater , computer science , ecology , organic chemistry , computer network , biology
After death the fraction of living matter which is not biodegraded (shells, bones, corals, carbonaceous deposits) becomes environmentally sustainable. This is not the case for plastics so that these wastes should be either recycled or made environmentally inert and stored in secure repositories as a resource for future generations. Chemistry has offered different solutions to this problem, and each brings about advantages and disadvantages when compared to other options. One further possible route could consist in the enrichment of the plastics waste in carbon content (“carbonization”), in analogy with the production of charcoal from wood, but we hope to stimulate a debate about all the other possible routes among scientists and engineers in the involved fields.