The world has a plastic problem that we are late to the table to address. We have an ocean being filled with plastic and we are filling ourselves with it as well. Exposure to microplastic and nanoplastic (MNPs) is a health problem. MNPs are used widely in products. They are in the water we drink, and getting into our foods.
An observational study published in the New England Journal of Medicine recently describes the danger of MNPs found in plaque lining the carotid arteries of people. The study involved 304 patients and showed that 257, between ages 18 and 75, with asymptomatic artery disease had measurable levels of MNPs in their carotid arteries. Of these 58% had polyethylene and 12% had polyvinyl chloride in the plaque. Electron microscopy revealed visible, jagged-edged embedded MNP particles. The study concluded that those with detectable MNP levels were at a 4.5 times higher risk of heart attack or stroke at 34 months follow-up than those with no MNPs detected. Besides MNPs in arterial plaque, other studies have found plastic in breast milk, urine, blood, and lungs.
Microplastics today are everywhere. We are finding them in the deepest parts of the ocean and at the top of Mount Everest. It should be no wonder, therefore, that microplastics have invaded us.
Speaking of the ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Ocean is a collection of marine debris the size of Texas and much of it is plastic. It is a collection of visible floating trash, microplastic and nanoplastic that has accumulated with origins from the countries of the Pacific Rim including North and South America, and Asia.
In 2019, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, working with the Alfred Wegener Institute, conducted a five-week expedition across the Pacific Ocean and found significant amounts of plastic waste in marine protected areas. These sites were in addition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Following a route drawn up by the SCUD (Surface Currents from Diagnostics) model, created at the Asia-Pacific Data-Research Center at the University of Hawaii, the expedition gathered surface water samples from Vancouver to Singapore (see image at the beginning of this article). The study noted wherever it went there was plastic. No sampling came up empty indicating the plastic pollution problem is much worse than previously thought.
What were the methodologies chosen for sampling? The first was an eye survey by teams of two scientists stationed on deck throughout the transit. The second used nets with mesh sizes of 0.3 millimetres that were towed to do sampling at nine locations. Those conducting the study noted an abundance of degraded smaller plastic fragments suggesting further degradation was likely which would mean large amounts of MNPs present. The limitations of the methodologies used meant MNPs were not captured.
One can assume MNPs were present throughout the ocean environment traversed. The amount and volume is unknown. If MNPs were abundant in the surface waters of the Pacific, what kind of threat did they pose to ocean life considering the noted threat to humans as described above in the New England Journal of Medicine study?
In 2022, the United Nations began working on a global plastic pollution agreement that will become legally binding this year. Called the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter, it is creating a database to track the lifecycle of plastic, analyze environmental, biological, and socio-economic impacts, look at technological innovation, share financial and capacity-building resources, and list action plans across the planet. Among the many resources created so far are a marine microplastics database and pollution map, a marine litter database and litter watch, a global plastic watch and more.
In 2022 the World Health Organization published a 156-page document covering dietary and exposure to MNP guidelines. I wonder, therefore, why the United Nations hasn’t incorporated MNPs into its global partnership strategy.
]]>Many years ago I did some consulting work at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. My focus was on the design of a system to manage one-time-use plastic materials for interventional radiology cases. All the plastic equipment used for interventional procedures came with shelf expiry dates and caseload volumes required an order tracking, use, outcome and disposition record for every procedure and patient. Plastic devices that got shoved to the back of the closet would have past best before-dates and were costing the Radiology Department tens of thousands of dollars every year. The stuff was either being thrown out having never been used, or was being sent to countries where healthcare providers were willing to overlook the expiry dates.
What was behind these best-before dates? When you buy milk or other perishable items at a grocery store, best-before dates are featured prominently. That doesn’t mean that on the expiry date, the milk you paid good money for has gone sour. The best-before dates on a lot of items are highly misleading because so many things with date stamps remain viable for days, weeks, and in some cases months after.
The biopharmaceutical industry, not to be outdone by perishable food providers, has bought into the expiry-date mantra. The use of best-before dates drives consumption which means reorders and greater profits. That appears to be what is behind describing plastic items for so many medical procedures as being for single-use only.
Even government health authorities have bought into the nonsense requiring rigorous processes and data that promote single-use over reusability. But could plastic devices used once be sterilized and disinfected without impairing their function or causing harm to patients? We don’t know because no one appears to be doing the testing even in animal studies.
And even if a plastic device could be reused, the manufacturer for liability reasons is likely to slap a one-time use label on it to discourage hospitals from even considering reuse. The result is there is little in the way of a market for multi-use plastic medical devices despite the existence of autoclaves which have been around since 1879. Autoclaves work like pressure cookers and reliably sterilize medical tools. Surprisingly, autoclaves can sterilize all kinds of plastic found in medical supplies.
In the United States and elsewhere, however, the reuse of plastic medical devices seems almost absent. Hospitals have gotten into the habit of throwing away stuff used once. Some of this behaviour makes sense. Where masks and surgical gowns made of cloth were once sent to the laundry to be cleaned for reuse, today, hospitals dispose of paper-based equivalents. Hospitals have hazardous waste protocols for such items. The one-time use plastic catheter tube, syringe, or specimen cup which is treated as waste in the same way, however, poses a far greater biohazard because the chemicals, microparticles and nanoparticles in plastic can persist for years if not centuries. Incineration puts the stuff into the air. Burying in landfills puts the contaminants into the soil and groundwater.
One-time-use plastic, therefore, is contributing harm to the environment and human health. And one-time-use plastic in healthcare is doing the same which seems strange when you consider that hospitals are supposed to be focusing on keeping people healthy.
In the JAMA article it provides some interesting statistics:
Other points the JAMA article notes include:
Knowing all of the above it is surprising to see that healthcare delivery and the devices and materials used are becoming more single-use rather than reusable focused. Catheters, surgical instruments, and specialized equipment containing plastic are all disposed of after a single patient interaction. This is industry-driven planned obsolescence focused on profits rather than environmental sustainability. And because single-use is now predominant, there is little evidence to support reusability reinforcing the behaviour of the former over the latter.
Today, we ingest plastic from single-use water bottles. Plastic is everywhere. It is in the soil, the water, and the food we eat. Do we have an inkling of what this is doing to human health let alone the health of the rest of life on Earth?
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The conversation around battery recycling is more potent than ever as climate change pushes public concerns about electrification and the adoption of EVs for transportation. The desire to switch to eco-friendly alternatives to gas and diesel vehicles is growing. Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery-powered EVs are the current standard. Li-ion batteries are recyclable but present a challenge that is both demanding and expensive which is discouraging to proponents of the technology switch.
Even batteries not based on Li-ion, such as lead-acid or zinc-carbon3 present recycling challenges. Both of these battery types release toxic chemicals into the environment because of improper programs for their disposal. What is needed are circular economic solutions to make battery adoption more appealing and recycling and reuse work better.
Four companies are at the forefront of implementing technical solutions that could become industry standards and game changers. Here is a little bit about each.
Ascend collects Li-ion batteries and transforms them using a patented technology they call hydro-to-cathode. Instead of extracting the metals from scrap materials, Ascend extracts impurities rather than trying to separate and split battery materials. This method not only upcycles batteries with a 98% success rate in material reclamation but represents a reimagining of the battery-recycling industry to meet 21st-century expectations.
Prior to Ascend introducing hydro-to-cathode technology the industry was rife with excuses. Battery recycling was seen as too expensive. Some companies claimed to not have the infrastructure to support battery recycling. Some suggested that upcycled batteries would not produce the equivalent power of new Li-ion battery packs. But Ascend’s simplified alternative to hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy could prove revolutionary for recycling and repurposing.
Redwood wants to reduce the number of batteries that go into landfills. They want to minimize environmental degradation caused by the transportation of raw materials as well. Their goal is to maximize material recovery by up to 95%, reviving previously dead batteries into greener versions.
They have successfully revived batteries as a result and have developed partnerships with the capacity to power a million EVs. They have created a drop-off network for people to offload old cellphones, laptops and other battery-powered technology to increase the number of batteries that end up being recycled.
Currently, Redwood operates in the United States only, keeping the resources domestic to align with the company’s environmental objectives.
This company is a European startup that is focused on rebuilding end-of-life batteries. It has a mission to reduce carbon emissions while being in the battery recycling business and strives to be a role model for exceeding regulatory EU targets with a proprietary and patented carbon-efficient hydrometallurgy first developed at RWTH Aachen University in Germany.
Hydrometallurgy as a battery recycling methodology is not new. But what Cylib is doing is improving its efficiency. The end-to-end process recovers all the valuable metals in a battery pack down to the individual cell level.
Li-Cycle’s goal is to reinvigorate supply chains by increasing Li-ion battery availability. It does this by saving and recycling batteries. Li-Cycle uses a proprietary technology it calls Spoke & Hub that combines safe mechanical size reduction and hydrometallurgical processes. It also provides consulting services to its clients related to the packaging and logistics for battery storage.
Li-ion batteries are transformed from a charged to an inert state. Cathode and anode materials get processed into battery-grade end products for reuse providing a secondary source of supply to meet the demand for critical battery materials including lithium, nickel, and cobalt to minimize the need for new resource extraction. The approach the company takes has won awards from the World Circular Economy Forum and certifications from ISO.
These startups may appear to be in competition, but the growing demand for EVs will likely leave room for them all to find a market. Because of climate change, the global economy by necessity is moving to a low-carbon and electrification future. Startups like these will provide a solid foundation for addressing the issue of battery waste through recycling and upcycling to meet future EV and other battery-storage application demands.
Others are bound to join in as EVs overtake internal combustion engine sales. But these first-to-market companies will have established a new industry segment with a solid economic future.
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Most of my readers I am sure are familiar with the concept of recycling. If you live in urban areas, then your municipality probably has instituted a recycling program for paper, cardboard, glass, metal cans and plastic.
But what is upcycling? The term describes a process by which something new is created from something that would normally end up in landfills. On my last trip to Costa Rica before the outbreak of the global pandemic, my wife and I stayed in a place overlooking a black sand beach on the Pacific Coast called Playa Ocotal. Costa Rica was probably the first country in the world to ban plastic bags. But bottles and other forms of plastic waste remain a very visible problem. To illustrate this, the Playa Ocotal local Ticos (what Costa Ricans call themselves) have gathered all the discarded bottles from their beach and its surroundings and erected a giant monument (see image below) that stands close to 5 metres (over 16 feet) in height. It represents a statement about the challenge discarded plastic represents.
iCOUP, however, sees a better outcome than building monuments made of discarded plastic. Instead, it wants to convert single-use plastic bags, and bottles, along with discarded motor oil into basic chemistry to make new products. How is it planning to do this? By using chemistry.
iCOUP has invented a catalyst that can perform miracles on plastic waste. What constitutes a catalyst? It is a material made of components that react if exposed to a target medium. The catalyst causes the target’s molecular and chemical bonds to break. The end result is atoms and simple molecules that become the feedstock for building new molecular structures which can then become new products.
You may be familiar with catalytic converters used in automobiles today to break down toxic gases and pollutants produced by internal combustion engines into less-toxic pollutants through a chemical reaction. This is essentially what iCOUP is doing with its target plastic waste. The goal here is to have a catalyst break down the chemical bonds in plastics and other hydrocarbon products fed to it. This means the recycled and recovered plastic garbage becomes basic feedstock for new chemicals and products. It never ends up in landfills or the ocean. These are circular economic principles applied to plastic recycling and upcycling. Its implications for the planet can be enormous.
The catalyst is built to work only on hydrocarbon-based molecules. These feature combinations of hydrogen and carbon from as simple as methane, a molecule with one carbon and four hydrogen atoms (CH4), to complex polymers that contain multiple chains and sometimes other elements.
Normally, breaking down hydrocarbons requires significant amounts of energy. How much? Just visit an oil refinery and you get the picture. These are facilities designed to take crude oil and “crack” it into individual molecules by applying a great deal of heat, pressure, and chemistry to produce various finished products – gasoline, paraffin, heating oil, paints, natural gas, and even hydrogen.
The catalyst is designed to simplify and lower the cost of deconstructing complex hydrocarbons. It combines zirconium compounds with aluminum. The materials are inexpensive and widely available. When the waste plastic is exposed to the catalyst it loses its molecular bonds and turns into chemicals that become feedstock for new products.
So what’s left to do to switch on the power of this catalyst to help deal with plastic and other hydrocarbon waste? The immediate need is to improve plastic, oil and gas waste-capturing systems and build out an infrastructure to process the waste into useful products. Only in this way can we reduce demand for new raw resources and remove existing hydrocarbon waste to repurpose it.
Read the published iCOUP findings in the January 25, 2023 edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
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