Abu Dhabi bodies commit towards circular economy | United Arab Emirates | Construction

The World Bank predicts that global annual waste generation will have reached 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050. That’s almost a 75 percent increase on the 2 billion tons we generate today. Building a circular economy will play a crucial role in reducing this forecast. Here, Mats W Lundberg, head of sustainability at global engineering group Sandvik, looks at why circularity needs to be considered from the initial design process; otherwise, it’s already too late. Product lifecycles traditionally follow a linear economy, where materials are transformed into products that are then used and thrown away in a ‘take-make-waste approach. This is unsustainable. The primary principle of a circular economy is keeping assets in use to create a responsible way of using resources while reducing waste. Circularity is crucial in closing the loop of product life cycles.

The ubiquitous use of plastics has been driven by their combination of low cost and properties, but these attributes directly challenge waste management schemes for plastic recycling. Some postconsumer recycling programs are now nearly 50 years old, but a significant fraction of plastics still finds landfills or other dumping strategies at their end of life. With the growing concern regarding plastic waste, especially ocean plastics, there is a need for innovation and alternative strategies for the economic translation of plastic waste to valued product(s) that will promote their efficient circular utilization. This review first describes the technical and economic hurdles associated with the recycling of postconsumer plastics, but then it focuses on providing an overview of emergent strategies to recover plastic waste through new polymer design, new recycling processes, and chemical transformations to value-added products. Specific challenges discussed include plastic waste sorting and separations, product variability including additives, and the high efficiency/low cost in which the existing petrochemical industry can produce virgin polymers, in particular polyolefins.