THEMATIC AREAS
Plastics circularity vs. waste management
- Innovation throughout plastics value chain
- Quantifying circularity and uptake
- Recycling vs. collection vs. prevention
- Product design for circularity and waste
- Reuse and resources recovery
- Chemical recycling uptake
Our PLASYS24 focus
A wave of research and innovation takes place across the entire value chain of plastics. Major hopes arise from novel ideals and approaches in materials and products design, to embed circularity to plastics and minimize possible pollution. This approach recognizes the limitations on the deployment of waste and resources management across the world, with actual recycling limited to less than 10% wt. of plastic waste worldwide and energy recovery in incineration plants associated with fossil GHG emissions. The circularity innovating encompasses technological, business, financing, project management and legal modalities, such as those associated with chemical recycling and materials tagging.
On the other hand, traditional solid waste management remains the most well technologically understood and more widely, socially mature, option that can be fast, effectively and affordably deployed: It takes the form of introducing robust waste collection and sound recycling and disposal services and infrastructure to the billions of fellow humans who are currently underserved, particularly in the Global South. There is tension between these two strategies for effective plastic pollution mitigation and synthesis and integrated solutions are urgently needed, which we hope to showcase in PLASYS24.
