Li Anni, Cui Haiyang, Sheng Yijie, Qiao Jie, Li Xiujuan, Huang He
School of Food Science and Pharmaceutical Engineering, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210009, People's Republic of China.
RWTH Aachen University, Templergraben 55, 52062 Aachen, Germany.
J Environ Chem Eng. 2023 Jun;11(3):110092. doi: 10.1016/j.jece.2023.110092. Epub 2023 May 9.
Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues worldwide since the vast majority of post-consumer plastics are hard to degrade in the environment. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic had disrupted the previous effort of plastic pollution mitigation to a great extent due to the overflow of plastic-based medical waste. In the post-pandemic era, the remaining challenge is how to motivate global action towards a plastic circular economy. The need for one package of sustainable and systematic plastic upcycling approaches has never been greater to address such a challenge. In this review, we summarized the threat of plastic pollution during COVID-19 to public health and ecosystem. In order to solve the aforementioned challenges, we present a shifting concept, regeneration value from plastic waste, that provides four promising pathways to achieve a sustainable circular economy: 1) Increasing reusability and biodegradability of plastics; 2) Transforming plastic waste into high-value products by chemical approaches; 3) The closed-loop recycling can be promoted by biodegradation; 4) Involving renewable energy into plastic upcycling. Additionally, the joint efforts from different social perspectives are also encouraged to create the necessary economic and environmental impetus for a circular economy.
由于绝大多数消费后塑料在环境中难以降解，塑料污染已成为全球最紧迫的环境问题之一。冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行因塑料基医疗废物的泛滥，在很大程度上扰乱了此前减轻塑料污染的努力。在大流行后的时代，剩下的挑战是如何推动全球朝着塑料循环经济采取行动。应对这一挑战，对一套可持续且系统的塑料升级回收方法的需求从未如此迫切。在本综述中，我们总结了COVID-19期间塑料污染对公众健康和生态系统的威胁。为了解决上述挑战，我们提出了一个转变概念，即塑料废物的再生价值，它提供了四条实现可持续循环经济的有前景的途径：1）提高塑料的可重复使用性和生物降解性；2）通过化学方法将塑料废物转化为高价值产品；3）通过生物降解促进闭环回收；4）将可再生能源纳入塑料升级回收。此外，还鼓励来自不同社会层面的共同努力，为循环经济创造必要的经济和环境动力。
