Source: Xinhuanet
Waste plastics are common garbage in daily life. This year's government work report proposed to strengthen the management of plastic pollution. Data shows that only a small part of my country's waste plastics are recycled and disposed of, and more than half are simply buried or incinerated, which poses a challenge to the ecological environment. "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters found that to improve the reuse rate of waste plastics, a series of practical problems such as high recycling costs, technical constraints, and difficulty in promoting recycled plastics need to be solved urgently.
Plastic waste is thrown away at will, and recycling and disposal only accounts for a small part
Scanning code, putting, points received... Nowadays, many residents have found that intelligent garbage sorting stations and renewable resource recycling stations have begun to appear in their residential areas. These stations are provided with complete sets of equipment by environmental protection technology companies and are usually unmanned. During a recent survey, the reporter found that in many recycling stations, plastic waste that is classified and recycled in a standardized manner is rare.
"Plastic recycling is currently facing many difficult problems." Xin Jun, head of an environmental protection technology company in Hainan Province, introduced that "in the front-end link, plastic waste classification has not been fully implemented, and many families do not have the habit of plastic waste classification."
The reporter visited several communities on the spot and learned that a large amount of waste plastics were directly mixed into domestic waste. In particular, in recent years, e-commerce, express delivery, takeout and other industries have gradually become the key areas for the use of plastic bags and plastic packaging, and a large number of takeout plastic packaging has been discarded in the garbage dump.
According to the "China Recycled Plastics Industry Development Report (2022)", due to the influence of the structure of plastic products, engineering plastics and bottle plastics with good resource value are basically recycled physically, achieving better recycling; but packaging plastics, especially film bag plastics, which account for about 45% of plastic production, basically do not have the technical and economic conditions for physical recycling.
Xin Jun introduced that the inadequate classification of plastic waste directly affects the subsequent recycling and reuse. "If two plastics of different properties are not classified and selected, they can't be reused after being crushed and mixed together, and they become real garbage for waste."
The inadequate classification of the front-end household link has led to some plastic recycling companies "not being able to eat enough". In a company in Jinghai District, Tianjin, which mainly engages in the recycling and processing of waste electrical and electronic products and the recycling of plastics, company consultant Wang Chunlin told reporters that the company's designed annual processing capacity is 5 million waste electrical appliances. The actual recycling volume last year was more than 2.7 million units, and there is still room for capacity release.
According to statistics from the Recycled Plastics Branch of the China Material Recycling Association, my country will produce 63 million tons of waste plastics in 2022, of which only about 30% will be recycled, while the landfill volume will be 20.16 million tons and the incineration volume will be 19.53 million tons, accounting for 32% and 31% respectively.
Waste plastic recycling is difficult and recycled plastics cannot be promoted
The reporter visited and found that most of the takeaway plastic lunch boxes have recyclable signs. Although many communities have waste collectors, their targets are mostly paper and other garbage. Lunch boxes, foam and other large plastic garbage that needs to be compressed for transportation are almost ignored.
Gao Yanli, vice president of the China Material Recycling Association, explained that due to the low profit and high cost of low-value recycled resources, recyclers are not very motivated to collect them.
"Plastic garbage is large in volume and needs to be compressed. A five-ton vehicle cannot carry one ton, and the transportation cost is higher than the recycling profit." Xin Jun said, "Foam is actually a very good recyclable material, but the industry basically does not collect it now."
The reporter's investigation found that factors such as cost and technology also restrict the recycling of plastics. Zhou Zhu, a member of the Zhejiang Solid Waste Utilization and Soil Remediation Industry Association, said that in order to meet environmental protection standards, some plastics must go through desulfurization, filtration and other procedures during reprocessing, and the cost of electricity and other aspects will increase by 2,000 yuan per ton.
At present, my country's plastic recycling industry is mainly physical recycling with simpler processes, and there are shortcomings such as product degradation, which cannot produce plastic products with higher added value.
Sheng Min, former secretary-general of the Recycled Plastics Branch of the China Recycling Association of Renewable Resources, said that the degree of automation in the recycled plastics industry is not enough, and the sorting technology needs to be further improved, resulting in the reduction of the quality of recycled plastics; after 1 to 2 times of recycling, it will become plastic waste that cannot be reused.
It is understood that digital technologies such as artificial intelligence have been integrated into the front-end recycling of small solid wastes, which can automatically select and collect separately, replace most of the manual labor, and reduce the cost of sorting and disassembly, but there are few companies that really do intelligent sorting of garbage.
In addition, the promotion and use of recycled plastic products needs to be improved. At present, there is no policy nationwide to stipulate the proportion of recycled plastic products, and the large-scale application of recycled plastics is difficult to carry out.
Wang Chunlin said that the company can produce a variety of high-end recycled plastic products and export them to Europe to various automobile manufacturers, but the domestic market is limited. "The price of recycled plastics is generally higher than that of virgin plastic materials due to technology, recycling costs and other reasons, and domestic processing companies rarely use them."
Increasing the willingness to use recycled products and promoting breakthroughs in key technologies in the industry
The 2022 Green Action White Paper of the Plastic Recycling Industry Joint Green Action Alliance pointed out that with the improvement of global waste plastic recycling technology and the increase in production capacity, it is expected that by 2030, the global waste plastic recycling rate is expected to reach 50%.
In recent years, my country has attached increasing importance to plastic pollution control and waste plastic recycling and reuse. Relevant departments have issued a series of policy documents such as opinions on further strengthening plastic pollution control and the "14th Five-Year Plan" plastic pollution control action plan.
It is understood that some places and enterprises have explored plastic recycling. In October 2023, the Shanghai Waste Material Recycling System Construction Implementation Plan was officially released, and it is planned that by 2025, the amount of waste plastic recycling will reach 700,000 tons/year. Some companies innovatively use recycled polyester, discarded fishing nets and other materials in their production lines to make components such as mobile terminal shells; some process broken buckets through several processes to turn them into renewable plastic particles for the production of home appliances and automotive parts.
The experts and companies interviewed said that it is possible to explore the formulation of standards for the use of recycled plastics, guide the society to use recycled plastic products, and create a green recycled plastic specification system such as a standard system, certification system, and testing system.
Zhang Mo, deputy director of the Circular Economy and Low-Carbon Development Research Center of Nankai University, suggested that more publicity should be given to the application of recycled plastics, cultivate social consensus on the recycling of waste plastics, and improve social awareness and willingness to use them.
Sheng Min said that it is necessary to further develop and apply technologies related to plastic recycling, with special attention to chemical recycling that can return waste plastics to the molecular level for reorganization. At the same time, it is possible to promote the use of bio-based materials such as bamboo to replace traditional petroleum-based materials and reduce the generation of plastic waste.