The European Commission has proposed banning the use of single-use plastic products, such as cotton swabs and plastic straws, and placing the burden of cleaning up waste on manufacturers in an effort to reduce Marine litter.

Under the proposal, single-use plastic products with readily available alternatives would be banned and replaced with more environmentally friendly materials. The proposal would also require EU countries to collect 90 percent of single-use plastic beverage bottles by 2025, with producers helping to cover the cost of waste management and clean-up.

But the proposal still needs to be approved by the European Parliament and the Commission and is expected to be passed before the European elections in May 2019.

Meanwhile, shareholders at McDonald's investor meeting voted down a proposal to "ban plastic straws" in the United States. The proposal's board member Elaine Leung, a Marine biologist and member of the global consumer advocacy group SumOfUs, said McDonald's consumes an average of 95 million single-use plastic straws every day worldwide, with millions of plastic straws used every day being thrown away after only a few seconds. After Starbucks, McDonald's is the largest consumer of plastic straws.

The McDonald's board of directors believes that the ban is unnecessary and unnecessary, that eliminating plastic straws means switching to non-disposable or biodegradable straws, and that the resources required to adopt the proposal will affect other environmental actions McDonald's has committed to.

In January, McDonald's announced plans to eliminate bubble packaging from its global supply chain by the end of the year and replace all packaging with recyclable or renewable materials by 2025.

On the topic of "banning disposable plastic products", under the environment of China's ban on waste and the global ban on plastic, it has set off waves of waves around the world. Many people who eat melons have said that they support the ban on plastic straws, and it is not good to pour them directly into your mouth.

And groups like McDonald's, Unilever, Nestle and others have said that by 2025, they will achieve 100% recycling of plastic packaging.

How to achieve 100% recycling of plastic packaging?

Truly achieving 100% recycling of plastic packaging requires the participation of the wider plastics industry.

1, mechanical physical regeneration process

is currently widely used in the field of plastic recycling, the process is quite mature, and plays an important role in the recycling of plastic packaging bottles. However, there is still a long distance for this process to achieve 100% recycling of plastic packaging. For example, the recycling of disposable plastic straws, plastic lunch boxes, and packaging bags all require a very perfect front end recycling system.

To achieve 100% recycling of plastic packaging, other recycling processes must be considered.

2, waste plastic oil process

Waste plastic oil process, for mixed waste plastics (polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and a small amount of polyvinyl chloride) do not need screening, using the principle of catalytic thermal cracking and catalytic reforming in the atmospheric pressure reaction unit a series of chemical reactions to cut off the organic molecular chain, reduce to the latest technology of low molecular fuel, Finally converted into gas, gasoline, diesel and other products of the process.

Waste plastic oil process compared with the mechanical and physical method of recycling process does not need plastic sorting and cleaning, there is no requirement for the type of plastic, waste plastic in domestic waste or waste plastic in stale waste can be used as raw materials. This process is more effective for the recycling of disposable plastic products.

On April 20, 2018, the Plastic Recycling Branch of China Synthetic Resin Supply and Marketing Association and Anhui Kemao Energy Technology Co., Ltd. jointly established the "Green Oil Technology Center" to promote the policy support, technology upgrade and industrial application of waste plastic recycled petroleum (PRF) technology.

3, chemical recycling process

Solvo-based recycling process

in the 2018 RE|FOCUS SUSTAINABILITY & just ended last month; At the RECYCLING SUMMIT, John Layman, P&G's chief technologist, said mechanophysical recycling has its limitations.

For example, recycled PP is mostly black or gray, very transparent PP recycled material is difficult to obtain in the market, and PP recycled material can be "smelly" and can be contaminated with "toxic chemicals."

Therefore, P&G has developed a solvent-based plastic recycling process called "PureCycle Technologies", which removes the color and odor from PP and produces highly pure, recyclable sheets.

Chemical recycling of PS

The Oregon-based Tigard Agilyx company has broken the world's first commercial-scale chemical recycling process for polystyrene. The Tigard plant will recycle up to 10 tons of polystyrene waste to produce high-quality styrene oil, which will be manufactured by styrene manufacturers AMSTY and NiNOS for use in the manufacture of consumer products. Jon Timbers, senior manager of sustainability and innovation at

AmSty, said the chemical recycling technology is an important complement to existing plastic recycling technologies.

plastics lose important performance characteristics after a single use, and it is difficult to recover these properties with existing recycling technologies. In addition to the ability to retain the properties of the original plastic, the main advantage of chemical recycling technology is that it places the recycled material and the raw material in the same place on the cost curve.

Selective extraction and chromatographic separation technology

In addition, a research team led by Nien-Hwa Linda Wang, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University in Indiana, used selective extraction and chromatographic separation technology. To recover engineering plastics polycarbonate, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) as well as flame retardants from waste plastics.

It can be seen that under the global environment of plastic ban, more researchers and entrepreneurs have been inspired to invest more energy in developing new technologies related to plastic recycling.

Plastic is famous for its recycling, but less than a hundred years after its birth because of plastic pollution and human discussion, its lack is that plastics are widely used at the same time its recycling and reuse of related technologies have not synchronized development. And when human beings are faced with a crisis, it causes more people to think.

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