Converting Plastic Waste into Useful Products

Dear Colleagues,

About six billion tons of plastic waste have accumulated in landfills and the natural environment over the past 50 years. The plastic produced and the plastic waste in the landfills and oceans have continued to rise exponentially over the past 50 years (Jambeck, Geyer et al. 2015). The majority (76%) of the waste was landfilled, 12% was incinerated, and 3% ended up in the oceans (Geyer, Jambeck et al. 2017, Rochman 2018). Current global recycle rates indicate that only 9% of the total plastic waste is being recycled. If the current trend continues, the planet will have more plastics than fish in the oceans by 2050 (MacArthur 2017). Huge gyres of floating plastics trash (twice the size of Texas) are already circulating in the world’s oceans (Lavers and Bond 2017). Most plastics take hundreds of years to degrade in the environment. As they degrade slowly, they release toxic particles and chemicals into the environment (Rochman, Browne et al. 2013). This pollution poses serious threats to our ecosystems, drinking water, food supply, and human health (Rochman 2018).  

To resolve this serious environmental issue, it is critical to research and develop novel methods to valorize plastic waste. In addition to generating fuels/energy, converting plastic waste into other useful products is strongly encouraged as the current fuel/energy price is volatile. Analyses such as techno-economic and lifecycle analyses would be helpful to identify valuable co-products (e.g., special chemicals) that can make the waste-to-fuel conversion economical.  

This Special Issue will concentrate on highlighting timely research studies aiming to reuse and repurpose these plastic wastes. Topics include but are not limited to:

• Chemical recycling of plastic wastes;
• Role of catalysts in chemical recycling;
• Impact of pollutants on chemical recycling of plastics;
• Physical, thermochemical, chemical, or electrochemical methods as the support of chemical recycling process.
• Techno-economic and lifecycle analyses of chemical recycling;

Dr. Wan-Ting Chen
Guest Editor

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