Plastic has been given a rough time recently. It’s worth remembering what a useful material it is, and it is not the material that is at fault, but what it’s produced from (fossil fuels) and how it is disposed of.

As seen below, in a hierachical circular model, reuse of a plastic item is much better than recycling. Less energy is used, since there’s no need to turn the plastic into flake, wash it, dry it, remould it into nurldes and injection mould it again.

The 10 ‘R’s of waste reduction: Refuse, Reduce, Renew, Re-use, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Re-purpose, Recycle & Recover.

Hierachy for reducing waste (moving from Take/Use/Throw to Circularity) [1]

Microalgae can be used to make biochemicals to help the shift from fossil-based plastics to bio-sourced & biodegradable bioplastics.

Example of bioplastics currently utilised, segmented by feedstock type and biodegradability

Some plastic statistics;

  • 7.7 billion plastic water bottles are used in the UK every year (2019) [3]
  • 13.5 billion plastic bottles produced in the UK every year (2018) [4]
  • Every hour, some 54.9 million plastic bottles are discarded and 481.6 billion bottles are thrown out in one year [5]
  • Over half a trillion plastic bottles produced annually (2022) [6]
  • 367 million tonnes of plastic produced in the world per year (2020) [7]
  • 15 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year [8]
RefSource/Attribute
[1]Dan Bramall https://www.nbillustration.co.uk/_images/bramall_dan/nb_dan_bramall_5054t.jpg
[2]J.C. Philp, A. Bartsev, R.J. Ritchie, M.A. Baucher, K. Guy, Bioplastics science from a policy vantage point, New Biotechnol. Issue 30 (2013) p635–646
[3]https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/biffa-to-begin-work-on-pet-recycling-facility/
[4]https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-production-of-plastics-since-1950/
[5]
[6]https://graphics.reuters.com/ENVIRONMENT-PLASTIC/0100B275155/index.html
[7]
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