PLASTIC WASTE MANAGEMENT HAZARDS WASTE-TO-ENERGY, CHEMICAL RECYCLING, AND PLASTIC FUELS Lee Bell Professor Hideshige Takada IPEN logo PLASTIC WASTE MANAGEMENT HAZARDS Authors Prof. Hideshige Takada, Dept. of Environmental & Natural Resource Sciences Lee Bell, IPEN Mercury and POPs Policy Advisor IPEN is a network of non-governmental organizations working in more than 100 countries to reduce and eliminate the harm to human health and the environment from toxic chemicals. www.ipen.org International Pellet Watch is a nonprofit ecological research group whose mission is to monitor the occurrences of plastic waste, and plastic pellets in particular, around the world. Based at the University of Agriculture and Technology, Department of Environmental Resources Science in Tokyo, Japan, the group has been gathering data and educating the public about the hazards of plastic waste since 2013. http://pelletwatch.org/ ISBN: 978-1-955400-10-7 © 2021. International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN). All rights reserved. IPEN Production Team: Bjorn Beeler, Tim Warner, Betty Wahlund Cite this publication as: Takada, H. and Bell, L. Plastic Waste Management Hazards. International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), June 2021. ii CONTENTS Executive Summary ...........................................................................5 Key Findings ...................................................................................................6 Glossary .............................................................................................8 Introduction .....................................................................................11 1. Plastics in a global circular economy? .......................................... 13 Plastic accelerates climate change. ............................................................ 15 What are monomers, polymers and plastics? .......................................... 20 Toxic additives ............................................................................................. 22 Additives of global concern: Phenolic benzotriazoles UV -326, UV-327 and UV-328 ................................................................................27 Plastic Recycling ......................................................................................... 29 Is it really recycling or just export? ........................................................... 32 Plastic recycling in low-income countries ............................................... 34 What plastic actually gets recycled and what does not? .........................37 PVC - the poisonous polymer .................................................................... 42 2. Chemical recycling of plastic ........................................................46 Chemical recycling techniques .................................................................. 48 Chemical depolymerization ................................................................ 48 Solvent-based regeneration ................................................................ 50 Thermal depolymerization (pyrolysis and gasification) ..................52 Depolymerization to plastic .................................................................55 Depolymerization using supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) ...57 Depolymerization using bacteria ........................................................57 3. Plastic to fuels ............................................................................. 60 Depolymerization to (fossil) fuels ............................................................. 60 Plastic to non-fossil fuels (hydrogen) ....................................................... 62 Pyrolysis ................................................................................................ 63 Photoreformation ................................................................................ 64 Refuse-Derived Fuels (RDF) and Cement Kilns ......................................65 Chemical Recycling conclusion ................................................................ 70 4. Mechanical recycling ...................................................................72 Key technical processes ...............................................................................73 Collection ...............................................................................................73 Sorting and cleaning ............................................................................73 Polymer Sorting ....................................................................................74 Remelting and extrusion......................................................................74 Toxic additives challenge mechanical and chemical recycling. ..............74 Downcycling .................................................................................................76 Plastic Waste Management Hazards iii 5. Management of POPs-contaminated plastic ................................78 Why must POPs-contaminated plastic be destroyed and not recycled? .............................................................................................78 Techniques for the environmentally sound management of POPs-contaminated plastics ..................................................................79 Separation of POPs-contaminated plastic wastes from other polymers ......................................................................................... 80 XRF (X-ray fluorescence) separation ........................................................81 Density separation of BFR plastics through sink/flotation. .................. 83 POPs in marine plastic litter...................................................................... 84 6. Non-combustion technologies for POPs-contaminated plastics ... 87 Gas-Phase Chemical Reduction (Hydrogen Reduction) ........................87 Ball Milling or Mechano-Chemical Destruction (MCD) ....................... 90 Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) and industrial Supercritical Water Oxidation (iSCWO) .............................................. 93 The CreaSolv® Process ................................................................................ 96 Non-Combustion technologies for medical plastic waste .......................97 7. Incineration of plastic waste ....................................................... 101 8. Landfill ...................................................................................... 105 Why would you landfill plastic waste? ....................................................105 References ..................................................................................... 107 Acknowledgments ..........................................................................113 iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Plastic waste has become an unprecedented pollution issue around the globe. From visible plastic litter on land and in oceans to invisible micro- plastics in lakes, mountains, and rain, the planet is increasingly blanketed in the petrochemical remnants of plastic production. With petrochemical companies avoiding fossil fuel carbon liabilities by massively increasing plastic production, the amount of plastic waste generated is set to climb dramatically. This report examines the current and emerging methods by which plastic waste is managed globally and questions whether any of them present a solution to the rapidly accelerating generation of plastic waste. The short answer is that recycling at the margins cannot provide a solution to plastic pollution when plastic production is set to grow exponentially. Other ‘re- covery’ waste management techniques such as incineration, plastic to fos- sil fuel, and downcycling to incorporate plastic waste in roads, will simply generate more pollution. The only long-term answer to plastic pollution is to produce less plastic. This seems unlikely while the petrochemical indus- try needs plastic as a safe haven from its carbon liabilities. Increasing plas- tic production offsets falling demand for its fossil fuels. The first section of the report considers plastics in context of a global circular economy, both as an economic commodity and a complex, often toxic, material. It questions whether plastic recycling is economically viable, environmentally sustainable, and socially just. The second sec- tion examines chemical recycling, which is now heavily promoted by the plastics industry as a way to eliminate plastic pollution by using chemical, thermal, and solvent depolymerization to generate feedstock and poly- mers to make new plastic from plastic waste. This section explains why chemical recycling will remain a fringe activity due to economic barriers, intensive energy use, and hazardous waste outputs. The third section considers another plastic industry ‘solution’ of turning plastic into liquid fossil fuels and burning them, and concludes that the practice is inefficient, polluting, and uneconomical. Similarly, recovering energy from burning plastic waste in incinerators and cement kilns as ‘al- ternate fuels’ or ‘refuse-derived fuels’ results in toxic emissions, toxic ash, high intensity carbon releases, and wastes resources, entrenching a linear economy. Plastic Waste Management Hazards 5 Section four assesses mechanical recycling, examines its limitations, and discusses key barriers to its expansion. Key challenges to effective me- chanical recycling of plastic waste are toxic chemical additives introduced during the production of virgin plastics, inability to recycle mixed poly- mers into