Nothing
is
plastic, it is
of
plastic.
The word changed its status as an adjective to that of a noun and took on the meaning of most of the industrial matter that surrounds us.
When in 1869
John Wesley Hyatt
discovered the first synthetic polymer was, ironically, an environmental revolution. Hyatt had accepted the challenge of finding a substitute for ivory, which came from the horns of wild elephants whose indiscriminate hunting could not keep up with the growing popularity of billiards. At that time its discovery was celebrated as a milestone that freed humans from the supply constraints imposed by nature and that, in turn, would save turtles and pachyderms. But today it represents the opposite. And for this reason, more and more companies and scientists make the circular economy, R&D and
upcycling
their
modus operandi
to prevent the destination of millions of products from becoming waste. Including our shields against Covid-19: the masks.
We throw away three million masks per minute,
that is, 129 billion a month globally, according to a study by
Southern Denmark University
. What if we could transform them into roads? That was the idea of
Jie Li
, a professor and researcher
at RMIT University.
from Australia who, together with a group of researchers, found a way to do it. "The masks have incredible properties, they are highly resistant and ductile, so they provide greater strength and rigidity, as well as flexibility to the base and subbase of the roads," said Li. The experiment is a mixture of recycled concrete aggregate (ACR) - or, more commonly, rubble - a material commonly used in the different layers that make up a road - with solutions of 1%, 2% and 3% of crushed masks.
Ji ensures that in addition to being an ecological solution to this environmental problem, the benefits of using this mixture as an alternative for the pavement can reduce construction costs by up to 30%. "To build a kilometer of a two-lane highway, about three million masks are needed, which would avoid up to 93 tons of waste. In addition," the masks are made with non-biodegradable plastic materials, they take 450 years to disintegrate, "he said Li and his partners are now finding ways to bring this experiment to a real prototype to deliver a product that is a problem to manage. "More than 1.5 billion masks have found their way into the ocean.
If we continue at this rate there will be more masks in the sea than jellyfish
",urged.
Bureo, the Mapuche word meaning wave
The concern about plastic in the ocean didn't just affect Li. Years before, in
Chile,
the fishing villages faced a paradox. They had a serious problem getting rid of the fishing nets on which they depended to survive and which, by fulfilling their life cycle, harmed the marine ecosystem on which these peoples depended. But
Ben Kneppers
and his founding
Bureo
partners
found a way to transform these old,
leased
fishing nets into scooters, glasses, and even desk chairs. Through the creation of their
NetPlus
material
, they have prevented
more than 1,450 tons of fishing nets from polluting the oceans
and have drawn the attention of companies such as
Patagonia
, with which they collaborate in the production of visors for caps.
"Our goal is to create a change in consumer perception, adding value to something that was previously perceived as garbage, that is the key to our philosophy", Kneppers narrates.
In addition, Bureo producers are designed so that when their useful life is over, they are returned to the company for recycling.
"We have a 100% success rate with fishermen, we are collecting nets from Chile, Peru, Argentina, and the United States, and we will soon start in Mexico, Uruguay and Ecuador," he said.
Kneppers expects its business model to be more than "testing a concept" and rather "a call to action."
"This has to be a collective movement, we have to work together," he declared.
There's a lot of plastic to deal with, as according to a 2015 study by researchers at the University of California, the University of Georgia, and the Sea Education Association,
8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced in less than 70 years
.
If we go back to the elephants at the beginning of this report that the plastic claimed to save, it would be the equivalent of a billion of them.
ECO-SIM
More and more large companies are looking to stop using virgin plastics and find ways to reuse existing plastic to create entirely new products. This is the case of the French companies
Thales and Veolia
, which have come together to rescue the interiors of broken refrigerators, and transform them into an essential product of the digital age: SIM cards. As little as a card weighing just four grams may seem
, almost 4,500 million are produced per year; that is, 20,000 tons, the equivalent of two Eiffel towers.
After three years of R&D they have managed to create the Eco-SIM. "Our mission is to advise industrialists that their products be eco-conceived", assured
Paulo Rossi
, COO of Veolia, one of the world's leading producers of recycled raw materials.
The Eco-SIM card created by both companies has a
neutral carbon footprint
, as both CO2 emissions from the manufacturing process and non-recyclable electronic components are neutralized in a comprehensive Thales carbon offset program, which includes projects to reforestation.
Jean Decolin
, the vice president of Thales in Europe is convinced that today there is more awareness on the issue of the environment.
"You have to give a second life to things so as not to introduce more plastic into a plastic world," he said.
One of the goals behind this innovation is to
reduce CO2 emissions by 15,000 tons.
For
Yannick Burianne
, Thales Marketing Director, "if all market players followed this same formula, emissions could be reduced by up to 60,000 tons per year."
Both companies have decided to go one step further and have transferred their innovation to the world of bank cards, IDs, passports and driving licenses made from plastic from the oceans.
Upcycle the ocean
Upcycling
, upcycling or creative reuse is the way to take advantage of waste to create new materials or products of greater ecological value, quality and economic value. Is it possible to upcycle our oceans? The Spanish sustainable fashion company
Ecoalf
is achieving this through its foundation and its ambitious
Upcycle the Oceans
project
.
"The project began in 2015 with three fishermen. Today we collaborate with more than 3,000 and the project is present in Spain, Greece, Italy and Thailand. The objective is to expand throughout the Mediterranean Sea," says a spokesman for Ecoalf. According to the report Mar de Plásticos by the Aquae Foundation, each year eight million tons of plastic pollute the oceans. Ecoalf has managed to recover more than 700 tons.
The Mediterranean Sea takes the cake for the most polluted in the world and Spain is the second country -behind Turkey- that dumps the most plastics into its waters
(126 tons per day) according to the
WWF
association
.
Like Bureo, Ecoalf has turned to fishermen, who altruistically separate the waste they find in their trawling outings and take them to containers in different ports to be collected by the company and transformed into filaments. "One meter of Ecoalf fabric has approximately 70 plastic bottles. With our collection of SS21 we have converted more than 850,000 plastic bottles into garments", they assured. However, the only plastic they can use is PET, which represents a meager 5% to 10%.
Between 2000 and 2014, the fashion industry doubled its production. The
fast-fashion
boom
causes 92 million tons of waste a year, and is the second industry that consumes the most water (79 billion liters), according to a study in
Nature Magazine
. In the case of clothing, data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) indicated that it uses 93,000 million cubic meters of water annually, a
sufficient
volume
to meet the needs of five million people,
therefore this industry is responsible for
20% of total water waste globally
. In turn, the
United Nations
data
indicate that there are currently 2.2 billion people without access to clean water.
The Green Deal, the cornerstone of the 2050 challenge
Although for many the circular economy,
upcycling
and recycling may even seem countercultural ideas, the
European Union
is determined to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and for this it has launched the
Circular Economy Action Plan
in accordance with the
Green Pact
. Among some of the guidelines, the document includes measures to increase the durability of the products, and in turn make them more easily reusable, repairable, recyclable, and incorporate recycled material. The aim is the transformation of all essential sectors into circulars. "We have to accelerate the process of moving to a circular economy and eliminate the pattern of take, make, use and throw away," he said.
Frans Timmersman
, Vice President of the European Commission.
However, in Spain
the rate of recycling and reuse of waste was barely 34.7%
in 2019. That is, 15 points below the 50% target set for 2020 by the European Union, according to
Eurostat
data
, the statistical office of the EU.
For this reason, 16 environmental organizations have denounced our country to the
European Commission
for low compliance with recycling rates.
However, the
European Next Generation Funds
for recovery from the pandemic force Spain to dedicate 37% of total spending (140,000 million, of which 70,000 million are in transfers) to investments and reforms that support the objectives of climate action.
For Timmersman, the compatibility between economic growth and emission reduction has already been demonstrated by a Europe that since 1990 has reduced its emissions by 20% while its economy grew by 60%.
But the politician believes that the pandemic has accelerated the steps to be taken in this process of ecological transition.
"This is not just about doing the right thing for the planet or the environment, not even about renewing our economy. Actions against the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are a geopolitical necessity. We do this now so that our children they don't have to face wars over food and water in the future. "
The challenge now is to do it fast and together.
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