Stathatou Patritsia M, Athanasiou Christos E, Realff Matthew J
School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
Renewable Bioproducts Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
J Am Chem Soc. 2025 Sep 10;147(36):32299-32308. doi: 10.1021/jacs.5c05454. Epub 2025 Aug 26.
Plastics offer significant benefits but pose growing environmental and health concerns due to low recycling rates and continued reliance on fossil-derived feedstocks. While plastics circularity has emerged as a key strategy to reduce plastic waste and impacts, current mechanical recycling pathways face major limitations in maintaining material quality over repeated cycles. Advanced methods like chemical recycling and dissolution show promise but raise questions about environmental impacts, scalability, and cost. In this perspective, we introduce the concept of spirality as a more realistic model than perfect circularity, acknowledging the inevitable degradation of plastic quality over consecutive recycling cycles and the need for tiered recycling strategies. We emphasize the importance of early stage integration of mechanical property benchmarking, life cycle assessment (LCA), and techno-economic analysis (TEA) to evaluate emerging chemistry-enabled solutions for plastics recycling. In parallel, we underscore the critical role of high-quality data, and the need for multidisciplinary collaboration to align chemistry, materials science, engineering, systems analyses, and policy for sustainable transitions. Spirality, combined with robust assessment frameworks, can guide innovation toward more pragmatic and sustainable solutions in polymer design and end-of-life management.
塑料有显著的益处，但由于回收率低以及持续依赖化石衍生原料，引发了日益严重的环境和健康问题。虽然塑料循环利用已成为减少塑料垃圾及其影响的关键策略，但当前的机械回收途径在多次循环中维持材料质量方面面临重大限制。化学回收和溶解等先进方法显示出前景，但也引发了有关环境影响、可扩展性和成本的问题。从这个角度来看，我们引入螺旋性概念，它比完美循环更现实，承认在连续的回收循环中塑料质量不可避免地会下降，以及需要分层回收策略。我们强调在早期阶段整合机械性能基准测试、生命周期评估（LCA）和技术经济分析（TEA）以评估新兴的塑料回收化学解决方案的重要性。同时，我们强调高质量数据的关键作用，以及多学科合作的必要性，以便在化学、材料科学、工程、系统分析和政策方面保持一致，实现可持续转型。螺旋性与强大的评估框架相结合，可以引导创新朝着聚合物设计和报废管理中更务实和可持续的解决方案发展。
