Overview

Polymers are ubiquitous in daily life. While their low cost, light weight, wide range of tunable properties, inertness and stability make them popular, it is precisely these factors that make them easy to discard (and not be reused).

Significant detrimental effects of the persistence of polymer waste include, for example, the giant plastic patch in the Pacific Ocean gyre, as well the large amount of plastics polluting both the terra and aqua environments with detrimental effects on flora and fauna.

Polymers are challenging to reuse as this carries cost, and it may not be economically or technically feasible to recover the properties and utility of the original materials (“recycling”), let alone produce materials with improved properties (“upcycling”). 

Despite these challenges, recycling/upcycling plastics would significantly alleviate environmental concerns, while at the same reducing the use of hydrocarbons used to produce them. Currently nearly 10% of all petroleum/gas is converted to plastics, with nearly 10% used in this production. Policy matters, for example using recycled plastic in building materials which would require the modification of local building codes, are also critical.

Multiple, innovative solutions are thus called for, going from the obvious (i.e., creating different streams of plastics which can be co-recycled vs. chemically breaking down plastics into value added small molecules) and this design project will task you with coming up with any one or any combination of these approaches.

Example projects 

This is by no means an exhaustive list but rather trying to represent the breadth of projects that could be formulated.

• Design innovative ways to collect and sort plastics and then reduce their volume for final moving to a reprocessing plant;
• Repurpose plastics as building materials;
• Mix plastics with organic products (cellulose) to make strong materials;
• Reprocess plastics into new uses e.g., by using 3-d printing.