<
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/yet-another-problem-with-recycling-it-spews-microplastics/>
"The plastics industry has long hyped recycling, even though it is well aware
that it’s been a failure. Worldwide, only 9 percent of plastic waste actually
gets recycled. In the United States, the rate is now 5 percent. Most used
plastic is landfilled, incinerated, or winds up drifting around the
environment.
Now, an alarming new study has found that even when plastic makes it to a
recycling center, it can still end up splintering into smaller bits that
contaminate the air and water. This pilot study focused on a single new
facility where plastics are sorted, shredded, and melted down into pellets.
Along the way, the plastic is washed several times, sloughing off microplastic
particles—fragments smaller than 5 millimeters—into the plant’s wastewater.
Because there were multiple washes, the researchers could sample the water at
four separate points along the production line. (They are not disclosing the
identity of the facility’s operator, who cooperated with their project.) This
plant was actually in the process of installing filters that could snag
particles larger than 50 microns (a micron is a millionth of a meter), so the
team was able to calculate the microplastic concentrations in raw versus
filtered discharge water—basically a before-and-after snapshot of how effective
filtration is.
Their microplastics tally was astronomical. Even with filtering, they calculate
that the total discharge from the different washes could produce up to 75
billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater. Depending on the recycling
facility, that liquid would ultimately get flushed into city water systems or
the environment. In other words, recyclers trying to solve the plastics crisis
may in fact be accidentally exacerbating the microplastics crisis, which is
coating every corner of the environment with synthetic particles.
“It seems a bit backward, almost, that we do plastic recycling in order to
protect the environment, and then end up increasing a different and potentially
more harmful problem,” says plastics scientist Erina Brown, who led the
research while at the University of Strathclyde.
“It raises some very serious concerns,” agrees Judith Enck, president of Beyond
Plastics and a former US Environmental Protection Agency regional
administrator, who wasn’t involved in the paper. “And I also think this points
to the fact that plastics are fundamentally not sustainable.”"
Via Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
