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Energy and sustainability
Published in Peter M. Schwarz, Energy Economics, 2023
Recycling ranks third of the original three Rs. Here, we find new uses for existing products. We are producing new goods, but using previously harvested resources rather than virgin materials. Recycling aluminum cans to make additional cans, or using the aluminum to make car parts, saves aluminum. It may or may not save energy, as compared to producing cans using new aluminum. Recycling plastic bottles to make new bottles, clothing, or even car seats keeps the bottles out of landfills and reduces trash. However, there are many instances where recycling costs more than new production, including higher energy usage. Some of the products you dutifully recycle may not be worth recycling from a cost standpoint, and may still end up in a landfill eventually. A life-cycle analysis—a methodology for assessing impacts associated with all stages of the production process—quantifies the impact of a product and is a way to compare recycled vs. virgin materials. As you might guess, the challenges to such an analysis include agreeing on the boundaries of what production stages to include, the quality of the data, and scenario assumptions.
Temporary housing: Shelters for refugee camps
Published in Mário S. Ming Kong, Maria do Rosário Monteiro, Maria João Pereira Neto, Creating Through Mind and Emotions, 2022
Sílvia Santos, Margarida Louro
Thus, the sloping roof of the infrastructure volume makes it possible to collect rainwater into a tank with a capacity of approximately 200 liters connected to a filtering system that allows it to be reused, in addition to the possibility of connection to local supply systems. Photovoltaic cells are also incorporated into the roof of this volume to collect solar energy stored in batteries. This makes it possible to use this energy later on to heat water, run an electric stove, and provide light to the spaces. As for the shelter’s materiality, following sustainability, efficiency, and lightness requirements. Nowadays, the most abundant rubbish in the oceans is plastic5, which takes many years to decompose - 10 to 20 years for plastic bags, 50 years for glasses, and 450 years for plastic bottles (Loctier, 2020), making this material an abundant and potentially raw material. In this sense, for the construction of the “kit house,” it was chosen as materiality, which is light and resistant to various climates. It is idealized that for this shelter, the method of mechanical recycling of plastic packaging is used to configure prefabricated panels that configure the entire structure of the shelter. This option also generates flexible, light, and resistant shelters that can be differentiated in visual terms and allow for different forms of appropriation and configuration depending on the inhabitants who will occupy them.
Sources of Natural Polymers from Plants with Green Nanoparticles
Published in Satya Eswari Jujjavarapu, Krishna Mohan Poluri, Green Polymeric Nanocomposites, 2020
Satya Eswari Jujjavarapu, K. Chandrasekhar, Sweta Naik, Aditya L Toppo, Veena Thakur
There is presently great interest in the current information regarding polymer related matters. Recently, increased production of petroleum-derived polymers for domestic and industrial purposes has been relentlessly damaging the environment (Kadier et al., 2018). Specialist predictions about the future availability of fossil fuels (such as oil, natural gas and coal) as energy sources that are not renewable, varies from one to three generations. After disposal, these petroleum-derived polymers remain in the environment for many years and subsequently damage the ecological system (Patel, Pandit, & Chandrasekhar, 2017). For example, plastic bags will still be around for several centuries. People use them for about 15 to 30 seconds or a few minutes (Chandrasekhar & Venkata Mohan, 2014a). If we throw it away, the plastic bag can either end up in a landfill, it can be burned with all other trash, or it can be blown away into the water (Mohan & Chandrasekhar, 2011). However, that plastic will return to humans in the fish we eat 25 years from now. It takes at least 450 years for one plastic bottle to decompose. If we accidentally drop our empty plastic bottle in the forest, you will still be able to pick it up in the year 2400. Most petroleum polymers do not biodegrade; they just fragment into tiny microplastics that are not visible to the naked eye (Kakarla, Kuppam, Pandit, Kadier, & Velpuri, 2017).
Reusing plastic waste in the production of bricks and paving blocks: a review
Published in European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering, 2022
Turkeswari Uvarajan, Paran Gani, Ng Chuck Chuan, Nur Hanis Zulkernain
The plastics longevity in the environment is still questionable due to their non-degradable and robust properties as it has only been mass produced in the past 70 years (Vaverková, 2019; Borrelle et al., 2020). However, these plastics might stay in the environment for decades (Andrady, 1994; Vaverková, 2019). Pocket Guide to Marine Debris (2003) reported that a plastic bottle would takes about 450 years to be fully decomposed. Meanwhile, Thompson et al. (2009b) found that there are fewer data on the accumulation of PW in the terrestrial and freshwater habitats than the marine environment. Similar thoughts shared by Bellasi et al. (2020) and Winton et al. (2020) that studies involving plastics in the freshwater systems are fewer than the marine ecosystem. Hence, this creates available knowledge gaps and causing trouble in understanding the total extend of the plastic problem.
Designing of reverse vending machine to improve its sorting efficiency for recyclable materials for its application in convenience stores
Published in Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 2021
Daegi Kim, Sangyub Lee, Minsoo Park, Kwanyong Lee, Do-Yong Kim
The NIR sensor has been used to identify the composition of plastic bottles and sort them according to their main components (Tachwali, Al-Assaf, and Al-Ali 2007). The sensor sorted the wastes as PET, commonly used for plastic beverage bottles, and other plastics, such as PP and PE. Plastic bottles are typically made of PET with PE and PP caps. Assuming that the PET bottles were mixed with other plastics, this study assessed the sorting efficiency based on the plastic bottles that were not analyzed because they were obscured by 0%, 50%, and 80% by other materials. Additionally, the sorting efficiency was analyzed according to the change in the sensing interval of the NIR sensor. Figure 4 shows the results of plastic waste analysis and sorting efficiency according to the sensing interval.
Feasibility study of a co-culture system for PET-degrading bacteria to increase biodegradation performance
Published in Bioremediation Journal, 2021
Alicia Lee, Siti Shahirah Binte Mohd Sahari, Mei Shan Liew
Under natural conditions, a plastic bottle is estimated to remain in the environment for up to 450 years before completely degrading (NOAA 2015), which corresponds to 0.001218% degradation over 2 days. The BE achieved in our studies is up to 5,500x faster than this calculated rate, thus demonstrating the great potential for biodegradation as a solution to the plastic waste crisis given proper selection of biodegradative agents and optimization of degradation conditions. Nevertheless, the BE achieved in our studies is still much lower than that needed for a commercially viable, industrial solution. BE may be improved through further optimization of culture conditions, media composition, co-culture composition, and other factors. Further exploration on whether the improved BE is driven by a synergistic or additive effect can be carried out subsequently. Future work on the mechanism and expansion of the co-culture permutation testing can also be done using the study framework provided in this paper. We would like to highlight the use of Gram stain and visual examination as a quick, simple method for ensuring quality control during biodegradation studies and facilitating the high-throughput screening of potential microbes. Directed evolution and other molecular biology techniques may also be applied in conjunction with physical and chemical pretreatments to enhance the effectiveness of plastic-degrading organisms (Lee and Liew 2020).