Department of Civil, Environmental, Land, Building Engineering and Chemistry, Politecnico di Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, I-70125, Bari, Italy.
Department of Civil, Environmental, Land, Building Engineering and Chemistry, Politecnico di Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, I-70125, Bari, Italy.
J Environ Manage. 2022 May 15;310:114769. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114769. Epub 2022 Feb 22.
In order to mitigate the social and ecological impacts of post-consumer plastic made of conventional petrochemical polymers, the market of (bio)degradable plastics have recently become more widespread. Although (bio)degradable plastics could be an environmentally friendly substitute of petrochemical ones, the consequences of their presence in the waste management system and in the environment (if not correctly disposed) are not always positive and plastic pollution is not automatically solved. Consequently, this work aims to review how plastic (bio)degradability affects the municipal solid waste management cycle. To this end, the state-of-the-art of the intrinsic (bio)degradability of conventional and unconventional petrochemical and bio-based polymers has been discussed, focusing on the environment related to the waste management system. Then, the focus was on strategies to improve polymer (bio)degradability: different types of eco-design and pre-treatment approach for plastics has been investigated, differently from other works that focused only on specific topics. The information gathered was used to discuss three typical disposal/treatment routes for plastic waste. Despite many of the proposed materials in eco-design have increased the plastics (bio)degradability and pre-treatments have showed interesting results, these achievements are not always positive in the current MSW management system. The effect on mechanical recycling is negative in several cases but the enhanced (bio)degradability can help the treatment with organic waste. On the other hand, the current waste treatment facility is not capable to manage this waste, leading to the incineration the most promising options. In this way, the consumption of raw materials will persist even by using (bio)degradable plastics, which strength the doubt if the solution of plastic pollution leads really on these materials. The review also highlighted the need for further research on this topic that is currently limited by the still scarce amount of (bio)degradable plastics in input to full-scale waste treatment plants.
为了减轻由传统石化聚合物制成的消费后塑料的社会和生态影响，（生物）可降解塑料市场最近变得更加广泛。虽然（生物）可降解塑料可能是石化塑料的一种环保替代品，但如果处理不当，它们在废物管理系统和环境中的存在所带来的后果并不总是积极的，而且塑料污染也不会自动得到解决。因此，这项工作旨在审查塑料（生物）降解性如何影响城市固体废物管理周期。为此，讨论了传统和非常规石油化工和生物基聚合物的固有（生物）降解性的最新进展，重点是与废物管理系统相关的环境。然后，重点讨论了提高聚合物（生物）降解性的策略：研究了不同类型的生态设计和塑料预处理方法，与仅关注特定主题的其他工作不同。收集到的信息用于讨论三种典型的塑料废物处理/处置途径。尽管生态设计中提出的许多材料提高了塑料的（生物）降解性，预处理也取得了有趣的结果，但这些成果在当前的城市固体废物管理系统中并不总是积极的。在许多情况下，机械回收的效果是负面的，但增强的（生物）降解性有助于有机废物的处理。另一方面，当前的废物处理设施无法处理这种废物，导致最有前途的选择是焚烧。这样，即使使用（生物）可降解塑料，也会继续消耗原材料，这让人怀疑塑料污染的解决方案是否真的在于这些材料上。该综述还强调了对这一主题进行进一步研究的必要性，目前由于输入到全规模废物处理厂的（生物）可降解塑料数量仍然很少，限制了这方面的研究。
