Plastic recycling: A panacea or environmental pollution problem

Increasing plastic waste is a critical global challenge to ecological and human health requiring focused solutions to reduce omnipresent plastic pollution in the environment. While recycling has been touted as one solution to counter plastic waste and resource utilization, it has been largely ineffective in offsetting the impact of rising global plastic production of more than 400 million metric tonnes annually, due to low global recycling rates of only 9%. Over three decades since implementing plastic resin codes, recycling has favoured thermoplastics, neglecting thermoset plastics. There is a constant need to enhance overall recycling efficiency by exploring advanced methods, as enormous gaps exist in fully…

• OF
  Ocean Frontier Institute
• NS
  Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

  Awards: RGPIN-2018, RGPIN-2018-04119
• JA
  Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology