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The age of plastics

If you’ve ever spent time in a museum, you’ll note artifacts that date back thousands of years. They tell us pertinent information about the past — from lifestyle to medicinal treatments and everything in between.

It’s our history. But have you ever considered what will be uncovered in archaeological sites thousands of years from today? It’s highly likely it will be a whole lot of plastic, but where’s the value in that?

A new paper published in Cambridge Prisms: Plastics argues that while plastics get a bad rap and wreak sustainability havoc on the environment, they’ll be the defining “type fossils” of our era.

“The type fossils are not stone, metal, or ceramic, but plastic, creating an archaeological record that is resilient and toxic, as well as ubiquitous,” the paper says.

IMAGE: Shutterstock

Plastics travel all over — they’re resting in landfills, drifting in the oceans, freezing into polar ice, embedding in farm soils, lodging in animals and even orbiting Earth. They may shrink into micro-plastics and nanoplastics, but they never really go away.

The authors suggest plastics and “the behaviors responsible for their distribution, produce an archive that may hold some historical and evidential value for society.”

They say plastics at the moment of discard enters them into the archeological record, “comprising material culture that represents human activities occurring at any time in the past.”

Such a record could contribute to understanding the full environmental impact of plastic and indicate the worldview of the “Plastic Age.”

The bottom line? Plastics still bad, information good.

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From plastic mess to manageable

Plastic waste is piling up, and while recycling bins are everywhere, only a small chunk of that plastic gets reused. But engineers might be onto something big. A new review in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research says that a field called process systems engineering (PSE) could be the secret weapon needed to turn our plastic mess into something more manageable.

PSE uses smart tech like optimization software, computer modeling and machine learning to determine the best ways to sort, recycle and transport plastic waste — making the job smarter, faster and cleaner.

The review shares some up-and-coming methods, like solvent-based recycling and chemical recycling that could tackle the hard-to-recycle items that are typically thrown in the trash.

These methods might even beat traditional recycling when it comes to cutting emissions and saving more of the original material.

These new systems, however, still face major roadblocks: high costs, limited infrastructure, and questions about how to scale them up without causing new problems.

Even bioplastics, which are made from plants and seem like a greener choice, have downsides — like needing a lot of land and water to produce.

There’s no silver bullet yet, but using systems engineering to look at the whole picture — from environmental impact to social fairness — could help us build smarter plastic solutions.

It’s all part of an idyllic circular economy where plastics don’t end up in landfills, oceans or your lunch.

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