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Environmental protection issues have attracted increasing attention, and marine plastic pollution is one of the most worried issues. In 2013, only 2% of plastic packaging in the world was recycled and reused, which made us believe that “plastic reduction at the source” is the real answer. The idea of recycling and reuse of product resources is to turn them into raw materials, which are then re-manufactured into new products. Although recycled raw materials can be used, the process of re-manufacturing products still requires water, electricity, manpower and other resources. After the ban on disposable plastic straws in 4 major places in 2019, the government, enterprises, or each of us can do more to make Taiwan an environment-friendly place. We will take the recycling of plastic and electric vehicle batteries as examples to illustrate the problems caused by the recycling of these two products:
Battery recovery and recycling.
Why does recycling alone fail to solve the problem?
From the 1950s to the present, only 9% of the plastics manufactured globally have been recycled. Firstly, the fact that plastic can be recycled technically does not mean that plastic is really recycled and reused. The process of recycling and reuse also requires a lot of energy and resources. Recycling needs to be cleaned and sorted, and plastic recycling also needs melting at high temperature. Many plastic packages are small in size and mixed with other materials and will be identified as “hard-to-use” plastics by recyclers. Where will the “hard-to-use” plastics end up? Most of them end up in incinerators, or are sent to landfills, buried on the coast or in the soil. They may still come out one day and be eaten by seabirds, which fly over the sea and be eaten by marine life as food.
Recycling cannot solve all the plastic that is produced.
Plastic pollution is really serious.
Plastic recycling yards are full of disposable plastic products for people's livelihoods.
A sea turtle eats plastic in a coral reef.
Can’t we switch to biodegradable plastics?
The biggest misunderstanding about biodegradable plastics is that since biodegradable plastics are biodegradable, they will decompose on their own if we throw them into the environment. As a matter of fact, most of the “biodegradable plastics” available on the market are “compostable plastics,” which need to be decomposed in a high temperature and high humidity composting environment for several months. If the companies that use biodegradable plastics do not take responsibility for recycling, once they flow into the environment, the harm caused by biodegradable plastics is the same as that caused by traditional plastics. The issue is the same with material replacement. Replacing plastic with paper means that more forests need to be destroyed, climate change will be aggravated, and biological habitats will be affected. If supermarket enterprises just replace plastic packaging with another disposable material, whether it is biodegradable plastic or paper, it will eventually increase the burden on the environment.
British supermarkets are encouraging customers to bring their own containers and bring back freshly cut fruit instead of pre-cut fruit and vegetables in plastic packaging.
Waitrose, a British supermarket chain, sells dry goods in its stores in refillable containers to reduce plastic packaging.
It's time to start reducing plastic by bringing your own shopping bags.
No product in the packaging-free store uses single-use plastic packaging.
Difficulty in disassembling and difficulty in recycling! Millions of waste batteries every year will become a new problem in the era of electric vehicles
As an increasing number of electric vehicles have entered the market, a question that must be considered begins to emerge - what to do with the batteries that are eliminated? Since the electric vehicle batteries sold in these years have not yet reached the end of life, this problem does not seem to become a big problem now. However, according to Tesla’s 8-year battery warranty, a huge number of electric vehicle batteries are expected to be processes in the next 10 years or so. If these batteries are not handled properly, they will pollute the environment and run counter to the original intention of manufacturing electric vehicles to be environmentally friendly. Dana Thompson, a materials scientist at the University of Leicester, warned that recycling electric vehicle batteries can be a dangerous business. For example, if an electric vehicle battery is wrongly disassembled or misplaced, it may cause a short circuit, burn, and even release toxic gases.
Hard to disassemble, hard to recycle! Millions of batteries are discarded each year.
Shredded electric car batteries can produce recycled metal, but it's often cheaper for battery manufacturers to use new materials.
References:
Greenpeace https://reurl.cc/pxpqZl
Computer King https://www.techbang.com/posts/87137-electric-car-battery
Image Source:
Greenpeace
Computer kinghttps://www.techbang.com/posts/87137-electric-car-battery
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