Our PLASYS24 focus

Fundamental questions are still to be answered for plastics pollution, with scientific and engineering understanding rapidly advancing. We gradually move away from just documenting plastic present in the environment to more systematic quantification approaches. Most importantly, plastics is relatively light and a non-‘permanent’ material, despite is durability engineered for certain applications. Once released into the environment it will move over land, in sewerage systems, canals and rivers, get temporarily or permanently entrapped, remobilize and so on, with temporally and spatially available stocks and flows. Linking these stocks and flows to the emission (‘leakage’) sources and the mechanisms / phenomena leading to such a harmful release, requires modelling and field measurements.

Plastics also breaks down from macro to micro and nano-scales with the resultant microplastics crisis outlook being extremely negative. How it breaks down and it moves dispersing in all three environmental media (water, land and air) remains widely speculated, along the release rates. Emissions also result from processing plastics in the entire lifecycle for example, during the use phase or while recovering resources via recycling or energy from waste plants (ash residues) and in landfill leachates. PLASYS24 put loads of emphasis in advancing a more integrated and comprehensive understanding of the sources, pathways and exposed receptors across the entire plastics life-cycle.