Utopia: What Comes After The Plastic Pandemic?
A hopeful vision into a circular future
It is January 2050. All over the world, ceremonies are being held to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the outbreak of the corona pandemic. People are remembering the victims and the devastating economic and social consequences of the pandemic. But there is also a sense of joy about what has been achieved since then.
Not only has humanity survived. We are rapidly applying what we have learned to the management of other crises. Economies and societies are being restructured and even meeting climate targets seems realistic again. This progress can be clearly seen in the use of plastics.
From Big Oil To All Organic
Plastics production in 2050 relies much more heavily on sustainable raw materials than was assumed 30 years ago. Bioplastics are to plastics production what renewables are for energy generation: an industry standard. About half of the newly produced raw materials for plastic goods come from by-products of ecologically sustainable agriculture, such as maize starch or sugar.
Green genetic engineering helps to shape the molecular structure of agricultural by-products in such a way that the production of plastics from organic raw material is significantly cheaper than the production of new plastics from crude oil had been in 2020. Less raw material becomes more plastic. And as early as the production stage, molecular markers are introduced into the plastics. These markers later allow clear tracking of the use and recovery cycle.
However, the production of such organic-based virgin material has already been declining since 2035 and now accounts for only about 20 percent of the total amount of plastics used. This is the result of the extensive use of high-quality recycled materials from mechanical, bioenzymatic, physical and chemical processes. These materials are recovered in highly developed reprocessing and recycling centres all over the world.
When producing new and improved plastics for a specific application, “design for reuse” or “design for recycling” is already one of the most important optimization categories for plastics engineers. This is because the production of non-recyclable plastics is associated with extremely high transaction costs.
[Manufacturers] Always Keeping An Eye On Their Eco²Balance
This positive development is due in large part to the brand manufacturers and OEMs who are continuously improving the eco²balance of their products. This internationally established concept incorporates both senses of “eco”: economic and ecological.
Companies use this management model not primarily because of strict political regulation. This was only necessary in the early years of the great transformation in the 2020s to 2030s. More importantly, a positive eco²balance gives them market advantages. The reconciliation of the economic and ecological camps that were previously at odds with each other has been a complete success.
End consumers not only appreciate this but can also verify the facts if they are in doubt. The CheckYourProducer smartphone app provides insights into the entire production, supply and recycling chain of products at the tap of a button.
This process of innovation has fully taken the plastics processors by storm. New machine parks make the simultaneous processing of recycled plastics and bioplastics into new products incredibly easy: In addition to improved, familiar production methods, new processes have also been scaled up industrially: 3D printing, the digital twin etc.
[End Consumer] Temporary User Of Products
This technological leap has also completely changed the behavior of commercial and private end consumers, who, by the way, are no longer called “end consumers” in 2050, but only “product users”. For example, the product users of 2050 select products and packaging types in retail stores. A 3D printer allows the production of the appropriate reusable or disposable packaging on site.
A noticeable difference is the absence of bottle-deposit machines. This can be explained by taking a look at the recycling industry. The recycling companies are the producers of raw materials. The markers introduced into the material during production have given the sorting of materials a massive boost. As a result, both the quality and the quantity of recycled plastics that can be used again have increased immensely. In 2050, only a fraction of all used plastic products is being incinerated.
The deposit system has been replaced by so-called plastics credits. Every time a product user in 2050 disposes of a certain product, he or she will be credited with plastics credits, which are traded like a freely available currency. Consumers no longer pay for recycling but receive money for providing the industry with a valuable raw material.
[Recyclers] The Producers Of Raw Materials Of The 21st Century
This kind of digitized waste infrastructure at the “point of trash” has led to waste generation, disposal and recycling taking on the role of the former oil giants. As a result, waste exports to other countries have also undergone a drastic transformation. Waste no longer always takes the cheapest route — as it used to until 2020 — but the route of optimal recycling in terms of the eco²balance.
Comparable to the flow of oil around the world at the beginning of the 21st century, the raw material waste is now directed to the recycling plant that provides the highest yield for a specific plastic.
The global South no longer serves as the world’s dumping ground. The technological leap in recycling technology in the 2030s and 2040s, combined with an almost complete phase-out of oil production, transformed such landfills into raw material deposits. That made waste as good as gold within three decades.
From The Waste Hierarchy To The Recovery Cycle: Produce, Reuse, Recycle… Repeat
Once it no longer makes sense to reuse a product, the recycling industry steps up to the plate. Sophisticated mechanical recycling has been established as a measure for standard plastics and engineering plastics due to its lower energy requirements and comparatively low installation cost. Ten to twelve recycling sequences are not uncommon. In this form, plastic is incidentally superior to paper, metal and glass in its eco²balance.
Bioenzymatic recycling has cut the Gordian knot of ‘non-recyclable composite products’. With little energy input, micro-organisms and enzymes can be ‘trained’ to be able to break down even the most difficult multilayer materials into their individual polymer components so that these can then be used as if they were newly produced.
Finally, depending on the application, physical or chemical recycling comes into play. These processes, which are more energy-intensive, play an important role especially in the area of individual technical and high-performance plastics. These different processes are not in competition in 2050, but complement each other in a sensible way.
By contrast, after being all the rage for a short time, biodegradable and compostable plastics are no longer of interest in 2050. The reason for this was that they encouraged consumers to discard plastics improperly into the natural environment and that they compromised the plastics too much during the use phase. In short: They were a transitional idea, born out of the necessity caused by the sheer uncontrollable amount of plastic that was still ending up in the environment in 2020.
Waste. What Waste?
As the 2050 celebrations of the anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic are reaching their zenith, millions exuberantly celebrate in streets and squares around the world. They do not leave behind the heaps of waste that used to be a common side-effect of such events in the past. And why would they? Who among the revelers would want to miss out on the plastics credits that are automatically added to their accounts as soon as a used product is thrown in one of the scanner-equipped recycling bins.
Waste… Well, that no longer exists.
FROM THE LINEAR PRESENT…
…TO A CIRCULAR FUTURE
Christian Schiller (Co-Founder of cirplus) is the author of the article “What comes after the plastics pandemic” that has originally been published in the below linked report.
