Revolution in the plastic recycling industry

Recently published on Vice News! This is incredible news and so needed with the annual production of plastic to the roof at 460 million tonnes in 2019. Shockingly, it about doubled what it was twenty years ago, while just 6% coming from recycling (according to the OECD).

Let me give you a hint about the science behind this.

In a few words, a group of scientists used machine learning to modify an enzyme that can break down plastic in one week. The most promising development comes with the possibility to use the new monomers issued from the depolymerization process to make fresh plastic without additional petroleum resources.?

Here is my take on the news.

While plastic has become one of the biggest environmental threats for biodiversity and climate change, this scientific achievement could be one of the game changers of the circular economy, and the starting point of an ecological revolution in the way we produce, consume, and recycle plastic. Why is that?

• The industry could soon benefit from an affordable solution to treat plastic waste at large scale (which is said to have quadrupled over the past 30 years) and avoid residues to remain thousands of years in the environment, which is having a tremendous negative impact on #biodiversity.
• With traditional belt recycling, plastics lose their integrity each time they are melted and remolded (as of today, we can recycle plastic only a few times). We always need more petroleum to meet the growing demand, which explains why the production of plastics is one of the factor of #globalwarming.
• Thanks to this innovation, the plastic industry will need much less oil for plastic production, because they will be able to reuse end-of-life plastics infinitely to produce high quality secondary raw materials to be further reused in their manufacturing process, like it is already the case for aluminum today - one of the champions materials of the #circulareconomy.
• If this technology is scaled, we could drastically reduce the generation of greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic industry, which account for 3.4% of global emissions.?

Tech may not always have a good name, but in these situations, we see how much it’s critical for progress. This discovery is truly inspiring for Glovo while one of our main focus it to support restaurants switching from single-use plastic to more sustainable materials for their packaging. I would love to hear what you're doing in your daily work to solve this challenge.

#sustainability #plastic #recycling #climatechange