The Future is Plastic

By Jae Elise Payong

Deep-sea diving! © Adam Cohn Available from https://flic.kr/p/DWwBQP

You wake up, and the sun is shining ever so brightly. It feels like you’re going to have a good
day ahead! You brew your coffee, grab the newspaper, and walk out to your balcony. The
first thing you see? Mountains of trash in all directions, and you smell an overpowering
stench that it’s as if there are green cartoon-like vapors emanating from the endless expanse
of garbage in front of you. It’s just another normal day in your life.

But is this the world you would want to live in?

This is not a scene from Disney Pixar’s Wall-E, but rather a reality that could happen in the
near future if the plastic waste pollution problem does not receive the attention that it so
desperately needs.

It is estimated that 150 million tons of solid plastic waste is produced annually1, which is
equivalent in weight2 to throwing away approximately one-third of the world’s population3 in
a single year alone. Fortunately, scientists all over the world have dedicated their research to
find solutions for this problem. One emerging method is to use quantum dot nanoparticles to
convert trash into useful hydrogen gas and other products.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure

Currently, the statistics around plastic waste recycling are dismal. In America, less than 10%
of the annual waste produced are recycled1. While the numbers are marginally higher in
Europe1, they’re not sufficient enough to change the world and make it a better place.

Even for the waste that becomes recycled, the industrially implemented recycling methods
are not highly effective either1. One process called “closed-loop” recycling is only useful for
plastics in near-perfect condition. Another process mechanically converts used plastic to
lower quality materials, but after a number of conversion cycles they are ultimately
discarded. Plastic waste can also be burned or chemically reformed to petroleum-like
substances to generate energy. However, these processes come at the cost of releasing
greenhouse gases and other pollutants to the atmosphere.

In all cases, there is a setback to recycling plastic, which does not spell good news for the
future of our planet.

However, modern advances in plastic recycling technology could soon change life as we
know it. In 2018, Taylor Uekert and her colleagues from the Christian Doppler Laboratory
for Sustainable SynGas Chemistry of the University of Cambridge conducted research that
investigates a process to convert plastic waste into useful hydrogen gas and other carbon-
based compounds4.

The process that Uekert and her team used to convert plastic into hydrogen gas is called
“photoreforming”4. Photoreforming requires three main ingredients: light, water, and plastic.
But wait a minute – you don’t see water bottles evaporating into hydrogen gas if you leave
them out in the sun for too long! This is because the reaction requires a secret ingredient to
bring all the different bits and pieces together to complete the process: cadmium sulfide-
cadmium oxide quantum dots4.

Quantum dots prove that size doesn’t matter at all. In fact, less is more! They are particles
that are in the nano-length scale5, which is roughly 1000-times smaller than the size of the
average human red blood cell6. To put into perspective, it's the size of an ant compared to an
adult human. These particles have been around for forty years, but you might recognize them
as the technology behind the top of the line television models that are for sale today5.

One very important property that quantum dots have due to their size is that they are very
sensitive to visible light – and this is taken advantage of by the electronics industry and
Uekert’s research.

In the photoreforming process, Uekert used an artificial sunlight simulator to mimic the
energy emitted by the Sun. The artificial sunlight was directed to an alkaline solution
containing the quantum dots and the ground plastic sample. Because of the size of the
quantum dots, they are excitable to a higher energy level which allows them to be reactive
enough to simultaneously convert the water in the solution to hydrogen gas and digest the
plastic into smaller compounds4.

Just like us humans who can become very gassy after eating beans, quantum dots are like
having pet hamsters that develop flatulence after eating plastic in the presence of sunlight.
The major difference is that for humans, passing gas is highly undesirable. But in the case of
the quantum dot “hamsters”, it could potentially power the future.

Life in plastic, it’s fantastic!

Uekert’s research stands at the frontier in the field of novel methods to tackle the plastic
pollution problem. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and indeed researchers around
the globe are pioneering more and more ingenious solutions. For example, instead of using
quantum dot “hamsters”, other scientists have resorted to investigating worms and bacterium
to combat the global crisis.

In 2014, it was discovered that a certain species of waxworms, Plodia interpunctella, have
special gut microbes that enable them to eat and digest polyethylene (PET) plastic7. A landfill
would be a five-star buffet feast for these worms, and they would have us humans to thank
for it.

Four years later, a different group of researchers identified an enzyme called PETase – an
enzyme that degrades PET plastics – found in the Idionella sakaiensis bacterium8. Similar to
the waxworms, the bacterium has the ability to eat PET plastic, thanks to the special enzyme
that it is equipped with.

Evidently, there is a growing focus on turning to our little friends for help with humanity’s
big problems. However, there is a catch. Uekert acknowledged that, while processes that use
biological systems to degrade plastic have been proven to work, they do not generate useful
products in the way that photoreforming does4. Therefore, more can be done in the field of
biological plastic degradation processes to catch up to photoreforming.

Perhaps they can discover waxworms that fart useful gases too?

Moving on to greener pastures

Uekert’s photoreforming research is a promising solution to eradicate the world’s plastic

pollution problem and drive the renewable energy generators of the future9. Not only does it
reduce the volume of plastic waste, it also produces valuable hydrogen gas. This product is
essential to the mechanism of generating electricity through fuel cells, a renewable energy
source that can power anything from cellphones to space shuttles without releasing pollutants
to the atmosphere9. Overall, useful energy is produced and there is a net decrease in pollution,
both in terms of solid plastic waste and atmospheric pollution.

But while Uekert’s research on photoreforming is a silver lining in the plastic pollution
problem, it’s far from being adopted as the industrial standard for plastic recycling methods.

Even though the overall outcome of the process is beneficial to society, it’s only effective for
3 out of the 10 plastic types that were initially considered for the experiment, and the overall
yield of hydrogen gas stands at 40%4. In other words, there’s plenty of room for
improvement, and the road to a plastic-free future is still a long way ahead. Uekert suggests
that exploring other catalysts and refining the method can make the photoreforming process
more commercially feasible4.
However, not all hope is lost. Despite the obstacles to be conquered in the path to eradicating
the plastic pollution problem, the future looks cleaner and greener thanks to the scientific
advancements of today. Research like Uekert’s show that there is hope for a future that
doesn’t involve living in spaceships to sustain the human race. We wouldn’t have to rely on
robots to compact our trash into building blocks, and neither would we have to wake up to the
rot and decay from garbage mountains.

It may be too soon to say if the problem will be solved in this generation, or the one after, and
so on. But for now, we can only hope that the passion and dedication to eradicating the
problem continues, and that the solutions would be found sooner rather than later.

References

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