Tony -- I'm really enjoying your newsletter (even if I "batch up" and binge on reading it...) and am very glad I found it.
I think we in the polymer chemistry community are very good at the "high tech" new-materials stuff, but tend to turn a blind eye to the "original sin" of our field -- enabling a continual flow of ridiculously cheap but environmentally damaging single-use plastics.
I would love to read more about things like polymer design for reuse and recyclability, doing something useful with plastic waste, etc. To my mind, that would be a better use of our field's collective talents than even synthetic biodegradable polymers or chemical recycling are.
Thank you! I had a comment from last night actually from a reader that lives in a remote town in Alaska where they actually cannot move their plastic waste anywhere and they have commented on it being a bigger issue that many small remote towns deal with and I also believe small island communities.
The polymer design aspect is somewhat difficult due to the nylon problem, but I think figuring out small scale isolated circular economies around plastic waste would be a big step with stuff we already have. Small scale pyrolysis seems unlikely, but maybe small scale sorting -> cutting -> single screw extrusion to generate pelletized recycled plastics could work? The next immediate issue I see there is scale.
Who is going to buy a super sack of rHDPE or rPET from some small remote island or town?
Maybe the answer is vertical integration (make some finished goods) or can the raw material provenance become a selling point? Artisanal rPET from an island in the Maldives might have some market power. I'm not 100% sure what the answer is, but I think there should be one out there.
I'll try and address this in the coming weeks, but I think we should be able to figure this stuff out if enough of us get together and work on it.
Tony -- I'm really enjoying your newsletter (even if I "batch up" and binge on reading it...) and am very glad I found it.
I think we in the polymer chemistry community are very good at the "high tech" new-materials stuff, but tend to turn a blind eye to the "original sin" of our field -- enabling a continual flow of ridiculously cheap but environmentally damaging single-use plastics.
I would love to read more about things like polymer design for reuse and recyclability, doing something useful with plastic waste, etc. To my mind, that would be a better use of our field's collective talents than even synthetic biodegradable polymers or chemical recycling are.
Thank you! I had a comment from last night actually from a reader that lives in a remote town in Alaska where they actually cannot move their plastic waste anywhere and they have commented on it being a bigger issue that many small remote towns deal with and I also believe small island communities.
The polymer design aspect is somewhat difficult due to the nylon problem, but I think figuring out small scale isolated circular economies around plastic waste would be a big step with stuff we already have. Small scale pyrolysis seems unlikely, but maybe small scale sorting -> cutting -> single screw extrusion to generate pelletized recycled plastics could work? The next immediate issue I see there is scale.
Who is going to buy a super sack of rHDPE or rPET from some small remote island or town?
Maybe the answer is vertical integration (make some finished goods) or can the raw material provenance become a selling point? Artisanal rPET from an island in the Maldives might have some market power. I'm not 100% sure what the answer is, but I think there should be one out there.
I'll try and address this in the coming weeks, but I think we should be able to figure this stuff out if enough of us get together and work on it.