Since the 1950’s, humans have produced more than 8.3 billion tons of plastic and 79% of it has ended up in landfills or the natural environment. There are currently three methods to handle used plastic:
1. Plastic Recycling
Recycling plastic will only reduce future plastic pollution if it can replace primary plastic generation, which is not currently possible because only 9% of of all plastic waste produced has been recycled. The mixing of different polymer types of plastic also creates low technical and economic value secondary plastics, so plastics are rarely recycled more than twice (Geyer et al., 2017).
2. Thermal Destruction (Pyrolysis and Incineration)
Various amounts of oil can be extracted from plastic through pyrolysis, which uses high temperatures to decompose plastic. However, this technology is relatively new, so scientists are still developing research and design units for the most optimal conditions (Sharuddin et at., 2016). 12% of plastic has been incinerated, but incineration is a major source of pollution as it releases toxic gases like dioxins, furans, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls into the atmosphere.
3. Sanitary Landfills
The third method is to discard plastic in a managed system, such as a sanitary landfill where chemicals from the waste won’t seep into the ecosystem (Verma et al., 2016). In normal landfills, chemicals will be released into the environment if
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自20世纪50年代以来，人类已经生产了83亿吨塑料，其中79%最终进入了垃圾填埋场或自然环境。目前有三种处理废旧塑料的方法:
1. 塑料回收利用
回收塑料只会减少未来的塑料污染，如果它可以取代初级塑料生产，这是目前不可能的，因为只有9%的塑料垃圾已经回收。不同聚合物类型塑料的混合也会产生低技术和经济价值的二次塑料，所以塑料很少被回收两次以上(Geyer et al.， 2017)。
2. 热破坏(热解和焚烧)
通过高温分解塑料，可以从塑料中提取出不同数量的油。然而，这项技术相对较新，因此科学家们仍在为最优条件开发研究和设计单元(Sharuddin et at。,2016)。12%的塑料已被焚烧，但焚烧是一个主要的污染源，因为它会向大气中释放二恶英、呋喃、汞和多氯联苯等有毒气体。
3.卫生填埋
第三种方法是在一个管理系统中丢弃塑料，比如一个卫生填埋场，在那里，垃圾中的化学物质不会渗入生态系统(Verma et al.， 2016)。在一般的堆填区，如果有化学物质被排放到环境中