From food containers to packaging, households and industries around the world dispose of almost 220 million tons of single-use plastics each year — and 200 million more of other plastic products. As a result, researchers in Germany recently designed a unique way of repurposing plastic waste by processing the used plastic until it becomes 3D-printer-compatible.
It's a common misconception that most plastic is recyclable. Since household waste tends to be diverse and often dirty, very little can actually be recycled through conventional methods.
So what can we do about the plastic majority that ends up in landfills?
A German research partnership between the Hochschule Bremen City University of Applied Sciences (HSB) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials (IFAM) made huge strides in the purification of used plastic for 3D printing, according to author Martina Ohle at TechXplore.
After stripping their plastic samples of unwanted substances, the HSB team filtered out foreign plastics using near-infrared technology, making the plastic more homogenous in composition. Per TechXplore, the IFAM team then produced polypropylene from the purified waste: a more resilient form of plastic that they then melted down and processed into a 3D-printer filament.
Now, the researchers are streamlining the production process, aiming to someday expand the impact of their purification research to other fields. The IFAM project lead Dr. Dirk Godlinski theorized that by introducing glass fiber additives into the refining process, for example, engineers might apply these recycled plastics within the higher-demand aviation and automotive industries.
"Increasing the demand for recycled materials is important," explained HSB's Dr. Silke Eckardt. "Especially with regard to climate change, we need to think about resource efficiency."
The plastics that cannot be recycled typically wind up overfilling our landfills or even drift out into waterways, eventually degrading into microplastic pollution. Undetectable by the human eye, microplastics contaminate the water, the wildlife, and ultimately the food we eat, posing risks to our physical, neurological, and reproductive health.
Moreover, microplastic pollution interferes with our oceans' ability as natural carbon sinks to absorb some of the planet-warming carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, per a ScienceDirect study. The consequences of the changing climate overall, of course, are catastrophic. As more carbon accumulates in our atmosphere, our global temperatures rise, intensifying extreme weather events and threatening our health and food supply.
By limiting how much we throw away and repurposing what we do, we can move toward a more sustainable infrastructure.
TCD Picks » Upway Spotlight
💡Upway makes it easy to find discounts of up to 60% on premium e-bike brands
|
Do you think we use too much plastic in America? Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. |
Definitely 👍 "The more waste we reuse and recycle," Godlinski said, "the more energy and resources we can conserve."
Resource management can help curb disastrous environmental effects while reducing our excessive consumer demand to keep our economy healthy. The HSB-IFAM study remains relatively new and small-scale, but plastic purification research is definitely a step in the right direction.
Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Cool Picks
