Our ever-increasing use of plastics is leading to growing environmental concerns, especially regarding the use of fossil resources and greenhouse gas emissions. In his dissertation, Paul Stegmann from Copernicus shows that we need to drastically improve our recycling efforts and switch from fossil to biogenic raw materials if plastics want to fit into a sustainable future.
A key chapter in Stegmann's thesis focuses on a dynamic long-term model of the global plastics sector, which assesses the effects of strategies to improve recycling and circularity, replace fossil sources with biomass, or a combination of both. “We see that strategies based only on circular economy or biomass solve part of the problem, but not all of it,” says Stegmann. “Using only biomass without recycling still requires a lot of primary material, while focusing only on recycling still uses fossil resources and does not fix biogenic carbon in materials. Combining the use of biomass and recycling unlocks the potential of both and allows the plastics sector to become a net carbon sink while reducing resource consumption.”
The relevance of recycling and the use of biomass, a 'circular bioeconomy strategy', was also confirmed in a case study on plastic bottles. Replacing fossil material with a biobased equivalent and improving chemical or mechanical recycling provides the best performance in terms of avoiding greenhouse gas emissions and using primary resources.
Stegmann will defend his dissertation entitled 'Growing in circles, A circular bioeconomy for plastics' on November 25, 2023.
Source: Utrecht university
