Technology tackles mountains of plastic waste

I just got back from the supermarket. I paid three figures for groceries again and hauled away a cart full of plastic.

Most of the plastic was single-use and disposable. Use it once and toss it out – mostly sacks and food and beverage containers. On this trip, I had seven such items in my grocery cart, some recyclable – if busy shoppers take the time to recycle.

Despite lots of hand-wringing and warnings by do-gooders, the mountains of waste are growing.

The plastic that fuels that waste is also growing. Over 350 million tons are produced annually, a number the United Nations says will triple by 2060. Plastic is growing because it’s inexpensive, strong, stable and largely impervious to water, oxygen and sunlight. And it’s used everywhere – in furniture, flooring, car bodies, textiles, clothing, coatings, you name it.

The stability of plastic, a boon while it’s being used, becomes a bane when it’s discarded. It sticks around forever.

In an effort to eliminate some of the waste, a clutch of American companies created the U.S. Plastics Pact in 2020, pledging that all plastic packaging would become reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. That goal won’t be met.

TRECKER

On a larger scale, negotiators from 175 countries have been working for years on the Global Plastics Treaty, a U.N.-driven commitment to end plastic pollution around the world. Four sessions have been held. The hope is that a legally binding treaty will be approved at the fifth session, to be held in Busan, Korea, later this year.

Chances for approval were vastly improved recently when the U.S. did an about-face and pledged not only to support the treaty, but also to drive a plan to cap the manufacture of plastic itself – all major polymers – on a worldwide basis. It’s a stunning proposal and probably not doable. But it signals a huge policy shift.

Meanwhile, we continue to deal with what’s out there. Of the waste that’s collected, 9% is currently recycled, 18% is burned and 73% is landfilled.

There are other possibilities. Scientists have attempted to bust back the plastic to its building-block monomers. Pilot operations in Germany, England, Japan and the Netherlands have attempted that with high heat (500 degrees Celsius) and with microbes.

Another approach, more subtle, has been to build weak links into polymer chains so that exposure to sunlight or soil bacteria will break down the plastic. That’s possible, but very expensive.

More cost-effective is to use fragile starting materials to begin with, such as modified cellulosic films from seaweed. The problem is that the plastic is often not robust enough for its intended use. Think of cola containers leaking in your refrigerator.

Given these hurdles, it’s not surprising that most of the effort has been to recycle. To use again what’s known to work. And recycling is tough duty. Sorting things by hand on a conveyor belt is not only labor intensive, it misses over half of what should be recovered.

That’s where artificial intelligence comes in. AI-driven robots have been shown to sort out and pick up 80 items per minute. The ultimate goal, 1,000 pieces per minute, is said to be within reach. And the robots don’t demand health insurance.

Even more impressive, AI can now spot recyclable candidates by shape. Hooked up to infrared cameras, AI uses 70 parameters to recognize everything from loose bottle caps (not recyclable) to books (sometimes recyclable) to aluminum cans (always recyclable).

These are remarkable times. We’re entering a new world where plastic pollution will be no match for American technology. ¦

Dave Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Florida.

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