People are starting to ban the use of plastic straws and bags, and replace them with paper ones or eco bags. These initiations really made me think what else we can do to make mother earth happy. Making little changes really do transform the world into a better place, but what about what remains in the past? A single plastic disposable bottle takes 450 years to decompose; we would all be on with our 5th life by the time one bottle disappears. I thought of ways we could preferably use technology in not only destroying the bad, but gaining good product. In a circular economy - where waste is recycled into new products instead of being thrown away - I believe that developed technologies can give new life to plastic wastes, and transform them into valuable products. With a few research, I found a way of using cold plasma pyrolysis which does not only recover valuable materials which can be sent directly back to the industry, but is also a very cheap and quick method to process the plastic.

Burning plastics to generate energy may be better than just wasting them. However, the problem to these kinds of thermal treatment is the detrimental effects they provide to the environment when not in controlled conditions. The process of normal conventional pyrolysis emits toxic gaseous chemicals such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. This does integrate plastic into our circular economy by the energy it generates, but if it gives harm at the same time, then we are just walking in the same spot, inefficiently using our energy.

On the other hand, cold plasma pyrolysis, compared to conventional pyrolysis, is conducted in tightly controlled conditions, which makes it easier to process the plastic by energizing the electrons in the material, breaking their bonds and forming other chemicals. These can be methane or hydrogen for energy, and ethylene and hydrocarbons for polymer. Ethylene is the basic foundation of most plastics used in the world today, and by these means, removing the most of ethylene from these plastics will allow for the creation of a range of materials using regenerated ethylene. By using cold plasma, 55 times more ethylene was recovered (in comparison to normal pyrolysis), and the process allowed 24% of plastic weight to be converted into valuable products. Not only does it develop a circular economy, but with the rapid and potentially cheap process, a range of more business opportunities will be exposed to people.

“Making Plastic Waste History with Cold Plasma.” Musculoskeletal Genetics, 23 Oct. 2018, blogs.ncl.ac.uk/brettcherry/2018/08/23/making-plastic-waste-history-with-cold-plasma/.