Recycling and Upcycling of Plastic Wastes

A special issue of Sustainable Chemistry (ISSN 2673-4079).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 2491

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Laboratory of Chemical and Environmental Technology, Department of Chemistry, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Interests: green chemistry; heterogeneous catalysis; synthesis and characterization of nanostructured materials; thermochemical and catalytic processes for biomass valorisation; biobased polymers and nanocomposites
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Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609-2280, USA
Interests: renewable energy and waste-to-energy technologies; liquid transportation fuels; biomass fuels; reaction engineering; thermodynamics; fuel refining and desulfurization

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The need for plastic waste valorization via recycling or upcycling technologies has become a necessity that spurs from the projected depletion of fossil resources (petroleum and coal), but mostly from the emerging environmental pollution and the associated detrimental effects on human and animal health. The nature/composition and origin of municipal or industrial plastic wastes that are based on existing high performance engineering thermoplastic and thermoset polymers reinforced with various organic/inorganic additives, determine the applicability of mechanical or (thermo)chemical recycling towards lower-grade plastics or back to the monomers or other platform chemicals with a synthetic polymer potential. Alternatively, chemical upcycling may transform plastic waste to chemicals, materials, or high quality fuels via conventional (or adjusted) petroleum refining catalytic processes. From the economic and sustainability perspective, collection and sorting issues, along with the whole logistics and legislation chain (e.g., transportation, storage, and security, etc.), play an equally important role. Looking at the future, the molecular design of new “conventional” polymers or bio-based polymers and composites, which may be subjected to facile chemical recycling via green and mild methods, in terms of energy and toxic solvents requirements, is also of paramount importance. Within this context, we invite the submission of original research papers and review articles presenting the latest achievements and trends in sustainable mechanical and (bio)chemical processes for the recycling and upcycling of all types of traditional plastic waste, as well as modern, specially designed petroleum-derived polymers/plastics and bio-based polymers, towards recycled plastics, chemicals/monomers, fuels and materials, including the important topics of technoeconomic analysis and life cycle assessment.

Prof. Dr. Konstantinos S. Triantafyllidis
Dr. Michael T. Timko
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • waste plastics
  • municipal and industrial wastes
  • collection, management, pretreatment, sorting
  • thermoplastics, thermosets, composites
  • Bio-based polymers
  • (bio)degradable polymers
  • mechanical recycling
  • (thermo)chemical recycling and upcycling
  • pyrolysis, gasification, hydrolysis, solvolysis
  • biological recycling
  • homogeneous, heterogeneous, and bio-catalysis
  • alternative/benign methods (sono- and photo-chemistry, microwave)
  • catalytic upgrading
  • platform chemicals and monomers, fuels
  • techno-economic analysis
  • life cycle assessment
  • green and sustainable chemistry

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

14 pages, 2370 KiB  
Review
The Peril of Plastics: Atmospheric Microplastics in Outdoor, Indoor, and Remote Environments
by Shikha Jyoti Borah, Abhijeet Kumar Gupta, Vinod Kumar, Priyanka Jhajharia, Praduman Prasad Singh, Pramod Kumar, Ravinder Kumar, Kashyap Kumar Dubey and Akanksha Gupta
Sustain. Chem. 2024, 5(2), 149-162; https://doi.org/10.3390/suschem5020011 - 12 Jun 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1778
Abstract
The increasing commercial, industrial, and medical applications of plastics cannot be halted during the coming years. Microplastics are a new class of plastic pollutants which have emerged as escalating environmental threats. The persistence, effects, and removal of MPs present in soil, water, and [...] Read more.
The increasing commercial, industrial, and medical applications of plastics cannot be halted during the coming years. Microplastics are a new class of plastic pollutants which have emerged as escalating environmental threats. The persistence, effects, and removal of MPs present in soil, water, and numerous organisms have become an important research field. However, atmospheric microplastics (AMPs), which are subcategorized into deposited and suspended, remain largely unexplored. This review presents the recent developments and challenges involved in fully understanding suspended and deposited AMPs. The evaluation of indoor suspended MP fibers needs to be critically investigated to understand their implications for human health. Furthermore, the transportation of AMPs to isolated locations, such as cryospheric regions, requires immediate attention. The major challenges associated with AMPs, which have hindered advancement in this field, are inconsistency in the available data, limited knowledge, and the lack of standardized methodologies for the sampling and characterization techniques of AMPs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recycling and Upcycling of Plastic Wastes)
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