Plastic treatment and prospects

2023/02/10

According to statistics from relevant departments, in 2018, China's output of plastic products has exceeded 77 million tons, with an output value of nearly 2 trillion. Plastics is a great invention in the 20th century. Its application fields are constantly expanding and its variety is increasing. It has greatly facilitated people's lives and became a material closely related to human life. However, while plastics bring convenience to humans, their environmental hazards are gradually emerging. How to properly dispose of used plastic? How to promote the recycling of plastic products? These questions are worth pondering. Now let´s share how recycling of waste plastics.

First, the two sides of plastics In 2018, China's plastic products output has exceeded 77 million tons, the output value of nearly 2 trillion, and is increasing every year. Such a large market also carries the heroic dreams of countless people, and strives to make unremitting efforts. However, perfect things cannot exist, and God does not allow them. Similarly, plastic has been crowned as one of the worst inventions of the 20th century, as its serious pollution has gradually been discovered and paid more and more attention. What is worse is that the treatment of this pollution is beyond imagination. Once, a generation of outstanding chemists have worked hard to achieve the excellent physical and chemical properties and durability of plastics, making plastics widely used in many fields due to their light weight, durability, aesthetics and low cost. Unexpectedly, it is precisely these excellent properties that make a lot of durable, non-corrosive plastic waste. A large number of plastic products discarded after use have become a major hazard to the environment.


Second, the treatment of waste plastics in the treatment of urban plastic solid waste, the current use of landfill, incineration and recycling three methods. Due to different national conditions, the solutions are different. The United States is mainly landfill, and Europe and Japan are mainly based on incineration.

1.    Landfill treatment, because the plastic products are generally light and not easy to rot, which will result in the landfill becoming a soft foundation and difficult to use in the future

2. Incineration treatment, because the plastic generates a large amount of heat, it is easy to damage the furnace, and the gas generated after incineration will promote the warming of the earth. Some plastics will release harmful gases and pollute the atmosphere when incinerated.

3. Adopting the method of recycling and reuse, due to labor cost, high recycling cost and lack of corresponding recycling channels, the world recycling and recycling only accounts for about 15% of the total plastic consumption. However, due to the limited world oil resources, from the perspective of saving the earth's resources, the recycling of plastics is of great significance. To this end, all countries in the world have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to develop various key technologies for recycling and recycling of used plastics, and are working to reduce the cost of recycling and recycling of plastics.


Fourth, the development direction of environmentally friendly plastics While actively developing plastic recycling and recycling technology, the use of plastics must also be developed in the direction of treatment or recycling.
1. Subtractive design research and development of materials suitable for recycling, the focus of consideration will not be on which plastics should be used for the production of individual components, but rather the materials that can be widely used. This is a revolutionary change in concept. . In order to facilitate recycling, designers began to avoid the use of a variety of plastics in the design of products, the United States BMW is preparing to reduce the number of plastics in its new car design by 40%, in order to facilitate the recycling of waste plastics. The world's electrical and electronic market has paid attention to the recycling of waste plastics. International Business Machines (IBM) has begun to mark the plastic parts of computer and business machines, and develop recyclable plastic electronic components and simplified disassembly equipment. The product structure, while also considering the surface coloration of the components, the amount of external binder used to control the plastic additives is reduced by the use of recycled process parts and additional parts.
 


2. Biodegradation Research and development of biodegradation has become a research hotspot in the plastics processing industry in the world. Researchers hope to develop a plastic that can degrade in a microbial environment to handle large amounts of disposable plastics, especially mulch and multi-package waste, on farmland, forests, and oceans. The research goal is to develop a plastic that can guarantee the performance of its name during use, and once it is used up, it can be decomposed by microorganisms in the environment to completely enter the ecological cycle. At the same time, the production cost of this plastic is relatively low and economical. If it is such a biodegradable plastic, it can be composted with ordinary bio-waste after use without being costly for collection, sorting and regeneration. Moreover, the decomposition products enter the ecological cycle without causing waste of resources. In the research and development of biodegradable plastics, countries all over the world have invested a lot of money and manpower, and spent a lot of energy on research. The plastics processing industry generally believes that biodegradable plastics are a new technological issue in the 21st century.

Fifth, The rise of the waste plastic recycling industry with the closing of the 19th National Congress, ecological civilization construction and ecological environmental protection have been the key tasks to be deployed. The green economy will have unprecedented development opportunities in the coming years. With the continuous increase in the amount of waste plastics, the recycling industry of waste plastics will become an important chapter in the green economy. The national government has begun to lay out the layout, such as the classification of domestic waste, recycling site layout and other formalization of the recycling system has been introduced and implemented.