Scientists have discovered a method to give new life to old plastic – by converting it into soap.

Plastics are chemically similar to fatty acids, which are one of the main ingredients in soap. For Guoliang Liu, an associate professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech and author of the paper published in the journal Science, this similarity suggested it should be possible to convert polyethylene into fatty acids, and then into soap. The problem was size: molecularly, plastics are very large, about 3,000 carbon atoms long, whereas fatty acids are much smaller.

The solution came to Liu in an unusual way. “It was Christmas. I was watching the fireplace,” he said.

When firewood burns, it gives off smoke, which is made up of smaller particles of the firewood. Liu wondered whether burning plastic would work the same way.

“Firewood is mostly made of polymers such as cellulose. The combustion of firewood breaks these polymers into short chains, and then into small gaseous molecules before full oxidation to carbon dioxide,” he said. “If we similarly break down the synthetic polyethylene molecules but stop the process before they break all the way down to small gaseous molecules, then we should obtain short-chain, polyethylene-like molecules.”

Liu and colleagues built an oven-like reactor that could be used to safely burn plastic. The temperature at the bottom was hot enough to break up the polymer chains, while the top was cooled low enough to stop them breaking down too far.

The scientists collected the residue and found the product they had created was short-chain polyethylene, a type of wax. They then went on to turn the wax into soap.

“It’s the first soap ever made from plastic in the world,” Liu said. “It has a bit of a unique colour. But it works.”

Liu’s method works on polyethylene and polypropylene, which are the two most common types of plastic. Together, they make up about half of all plastic waste: close to 200m tonnes every year. More than 80% of plastic waste goes to landfill, while less than 10% is recycled. One of the benefits of Liu’s method is that it works on “end-of-life” plastics, which cannot be recycled through normal means. The method was also designed to be able to be scaled for use in an industrial setting.

Liu urged caution, though. “Plastic pollution is a global challenge,” he said. “It’s one of the major problems facing our society, and this is one piece of a bigger puzzle. We need a joint effort between the research and industrial communities. And the best way to avoid plastic pollution is to minimise the use of plastics.”

Key Points:
– The use of single-use plastic bags in England has dropped by 98% since retailers began charging for them in 2015.
– Seven leading grocery chains have seen a significant decline in the distribution of plastic carrier bags, from 7.6 billion in 2014 to 133 million last year.
– Environmental campaigners are urging the government to learn from this success and take further action.

Analysis:
1. Impact on Human Health:
– The reduction in single-use plastic bags will have a positive impact on human health.
– Plastic bags take hundreds of years to decompose, and their production contributes to air and water pollution.
– By reducing the usage of such bags, the amount of plastic waste entering ecosystems and potentially reaching human bodies through food and water sources will decrease.

2. Impact on Climate Change:
– Although plastic bag usage has a relatively small impact on climate change compared to other factors, the reduction is still significant.
– The production of plastic bags requires fossil fuels, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.
– By decreasing the demand and distribution of plastic bags, there will be a reduction in the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, leading to a decrease in carbon emissions.

3. Actions Individuals Can Take:
– Avoid using single-use plastic bags and opt for reusable bags instead.
– Support governmental initiatives and policies that aim to reduce plastic waste and promote sustainable alternatives.
– Educate and raise awareness about the detrimental effects of plastic pollution on the environment and human health.
– Engage in recycling programs and properly dispose of plastic waste instead of letting it end up in landfills or oceans.
Original Article:https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/government-urged-to-repeat-success-of-plastic-bag-charge

Environmental campaigners have called on the government to learn from its own successes after official figures showed the use of supermarket plastic bags had fallen 98% since retailers in England began charging for them in 2015.

Since the charge was introduced, annual distribution of plastic carrier bags by seven leading grocery chains plummeted from 7.6bn in 2014 to 133m last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said on Monday.

Rebecca Pow, the minister for environmental quality and resilience, said the policy had “helped to stop billions of single-use carrier bags littering our neighbourhoods or heading to landfill”. The government claimed the average person in England now buys just two single-use carrier bags a year from major retailers.

Campaigners welcomed the finding but said the statistic did not account for all types of plastic bag . They also questioned the timing of the announcement, made as experts said plans for 100 new North Sea oil and gas wells, announced the same day by the prime minister would “send a wrecking ball through the UK’s climate commitments”.

A 5p charge for carrier bags was introduced in English supermarkets in 2015. In 2021, the charge was increased to 10p and extended to all businesses. Since then, the number of plastic bags used across all retailers had fallen 35%, from 627m in 2019/20 to 406m in 2022/23, Defra said.

Wales introduced a 5p charge in 2011, Northern Ireland followed suit in 2013 and Scotland did so in 2014. Scotland and Northern Ireland have since raised their charges to 10p and 25p respectively.

“This 98% reduction in single-use plastic bags shows inserting a plastic tax at the point of sale is a good policy for reducing consumer plastic bag use,” said Steve Hynd of City to Sea, which campaigns for an end to the production of single-use plastics. But he said the data did not include sales of bags for life, nor did it break down the distribution between in-store shopping and home delivery.

The charge is one of several measures introduced by the government to reduce the production of single-use plastics. In 2018 it banned microbeads in “rinse-off personal care products”, in 2020 came restrictions on the supply of single-use plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds, and in 2022 a tax was introduced on plastic packaging which was not at least 30% recycled. But campaigners said other promised measures had been delayed.

Nina Schrank, the head of Greenpeace UK’s plastic campaign, said: “The success of the plastic bag charge shows that when the government takes real action it gets results and the public gets on board. It’s ironic then for these figures to come out just as ministers are busy delaying vital plans to tackle the scourge of single-use plastic.

“Both the deposit return scheme and new rules to make plastic producers contribute to clean-up costs, which formed the key planks of the government’s waste strategy, have been delayed until 2025. Instead of letting plastic polluters off the hook, ministers should bring in legally binding targets to force companies to turn off the plastic waste tap at the source.”

Hynd said far more needed to be done. “This is just one small step in a much longer journey to tackle plastic pollution. To be considered global leaders in tackling plastic pollution they need to be setting themselves reduction, refill and reuse targets and they also need to be implementing their own policies, such as an all-in deposit return scheme, like they promised in their 2015 manifesto, and the long-awaited extended producer responsibility policy.

“There’s obvious context here, which is that they reannounced the success of the single-use plastic bag ban on the same day that they unveiled a hugely destructive plans for 100 new oil and gas licences.”

The plastics consumed yearly by Australians have a greenhouse emissions impact equivalent to 5.7m cars – more than a third of the cars on Australia’s roads, new analysis suggests.

A report commissioned by the Australian Marine Conservation Society and WWF Australia has found that the plastics consumed nationally in the 2019-20 financial year created 16m tonnes of greenhouse gases.

Quantifying the footprint of the production, transport and waste management of plastics consumed in Australia, the report projected that these emissions would more than double to 42.5m tonnes annually by 2050.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society plastics campaign manager, Shane Cucow, said research into the climate impact of plastics in Australia was previously limited because 87% of plasticconsumed in the country was imported.

Australia generated more single-use plastic waste per capita than any country except Singapore.

“It really is quite alarming,” Cucow said. “You think that Australia is quite a small country, but we’re consuming a lot more plastic than others.”

Kate Noble, the policy manager of WWF Australia’s No Plastics in Nature program, said: “While plastic is not one of the biggest emitters, and the focus on the biggest emitters is absolutely right, it’s also right that we should understand what the impact of our growing plastic consumption is in terms of emissions.”

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Recycling did not have as much impact on reducing emissions as experts had thought. “The conversation over the past 10 years has been really about how we recycle more. This research really makes it clear that we are facing more than a recycling challenge – we’re facing a consumption challenge,” Noble said.

Cucow said: “The scenario analysis projecting out to 2050 showed [increasing recycling alone] would only result in something like a 10% reduction in the overall accumulated emissions over that time.”

“The most effective way to bring down emissions from plastic is to reduce our overall consumption,” Cucow said.

The report recommend three actions that would reduce the emissions from plastic by more than 70% in 2050:

• Cutting total plastic consumption by at least 10%.

• Increasing plastic recovery and recycling, powered by renewables.

• Halting the production of plastics made from virgin fossil fuels.

Over 20 years, plastic made from virgin fossil fuels was 2.2 and 2.7 times more emissions-intensive than mechanically recycled plastic and plant-based plastic respectively, the modelling showed. The analysis also showed that chemical recycling was significantly more emissions-intensive than traditional mechanical recycling.

“With the bulk of our plastics coming from overseas, we really need global standards and regulations around the use of plastic,” Cucow said. Binding obligations as part of a global plastics treaty – which is currently being drafted – would play a key role, he said.

Last month, the federal government announced that mandatory rules would be imposed on industry to reduce packaging waste and boost recycling.

Dr Deborah Lau, who leads the CSIRO’s Ending Plastic Waste mission and was not involved in the report, said the analysis “recognises that carbon emissions should not be the only environmental measure when considering alternatives to plastic products”.

“Plastic pollution can have detrimental impacts to our environment, economy and wellbeing. With plastic production and carbon emissions predicted to grow, this highlights the need for solutions to reduce plastic waste and increase circularity,” she said.

“No single action alone can overcome the challenge. We need a whole of system response to tackle the issue. This includes reducing plastic consumption, developing alternatives to traditional plastic production, decarbonising energy inputs, and increasing plastic circularity.”

The lead author of the report, Carbon emissions assessment of Australian plastics consumption, was Kyle O’Farrell, the director of the environmental consultancy Blue Environment.

The report assessed the impacts of the five most commonly used polymers – polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene, and polylactic acid.