Is the Plastic Pandemic a Greater Threat to Humankind than COVID-19?

Shekhar, Abhimanyu Raj; Kumar, Arvind; Syamsai, Ravuri; Cai, Xingke; Pol, Vilas G.

doi:10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c08468

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The applications of polymers in health care, ( 1 ) their use for food safety and security, ( 2 ) their contribution to energy savings ( 3 ) and transportation, ( 4 , 5 ) and their many additional roles in our economy make them indispensable to modern life. However, they also present challenges related to the use of fossil-based carbon resources and their end-of-life fate ( 6 – 8 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…However, they also present challenges related to the use of fossil-based carbon resources and their end-of-life fate ( 6 – 8 ). The lifecycle of polymer products has detrimental effects on the environment; ( 1 ) in particular, the fates of plastic as mismanaged waste, ( 6 ) incinerated waste, ( 9 ) or accumulating landfill waste ( 10 ) each present different impacts. To transform into a green economy, it is imperative to develop polymers with a more sustainable life cycle ( 11 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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High-throughput experimentation for discovery of biodegradable polyesters

Fransen,

Av-Ron,

Buchanan

et al. 2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The consistent rise of plastic pollution has stimulated interest in the development of biodegradable plastics. However, the study of polymer biodegradation has historically been limited to a small number of polymers due to costly and slow standard methods for measuring degradation, slowing new material innovation. High-throughput polymer synthesis and a high-throughput polymer biodegradation method are developed and applied to generate a biodegradation dataset for 642 chemically distinct polyesters and polycarbonates. The biodegradation assay was based on the clear-zone technique, using automation to optically observe the degradation of suspended polymer particles under the action of a single Pseudomonas lemoignei bacterial colony. Biodegradability was found to depend strongly on aliphatic repeat unit length, with chains less than 15 carbons and short side chains improving biodegradability. Aromatic backbone groups were generally detrimental to biodegradability; however, ortho- and para-substituted benzene rings in the backbone were more likely to be degradable than metasubstituted rings. Additionally, backbone ether groups improved biodegradability. While other heteroatoms did not show a clear improvement in biodegradability, they did demonstrate increases in biodegradation rates. Machine learning (ML) models were leveraged to predict biodegradability on this large dataset with accuracies over 82% using only chemical structure descriptors.

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confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

High-throughput experimentation for discovery of biodegradable polyesters

Fransen,

Av-Ron,

Buchanan

et al. 2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Another reason may be the low proportion of plastic waste. The increase in household waste generation has been explained by many authors by an increased consumption of plastics (Klemeš et al, 2020 ; Shekhar et al, 2022 ; Singh et al, 2022a ). However, the waste composition results (Online Resource 1 ) show that the percentage of plastic waste varied between 8.5 and 13.7% (excluding Guyana).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 impacts on household solid waste generation in six Latin American countries: a participatory approach

Requena-Sanchez

Carbonel

Moonsammy

et al. 2022

Environ Monit Assess

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The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the Americas, the continent with the highest number of COVID-related deaths according to WHO statistics. In Latin America, strict confinement conditions at the beginning of the pandemic put recycling activity to a halt and augmented the consumption of plastic as a barrier to stop the spread of the virus. The lack of data to understand waste management dynamics complicates waste management strategy adjustments aimed at coping with COVID-19. As a novel contribution to the waste management data gap for Latin America, this study uses a virtual and participatory methodology that collects and generates information on household solid waste generation and composition. Data was collected between June and November 2021 in six countries in Latin America, with a total of 503 participants. Participants indicated that the pandemic motivated them to initiate or increase waste reduction (41%), waste separation (40%), and waste recovery (33%) activities. Forty-three percent of participants perceived an increase in total volume of their waste; however, the quantitative data showed a decrease in household waste generation in Peru (−31%), Honduras (−25%), and Venezuela (−82%). No changes in waste composition were observed. Despite the limited sample size, this data provides a much-needed approximation of household waste generation and composition in the pandemic situation during 2021. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10661-022-10771-9.

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“…Another reason may be the low proportion of plastic waste. The increase in household waste generation has been explained by many authors by an increased consumption of plastics (Klemeš et al, 2020;Shekhar et al, 2022;Singh et al, 2022). However, the waste composition results (Online Resource 1) show that the percentage of plastic waste varied between 8.5 and 13.7% (excluding Guyana).…”

Section: Waste Compositionmentioning

confidence: 99%