Table of Contents

1. Introduction to plastic waste and recycling Trevor M. Letcher

2. Production, use, and fate of synthetic polymers Roland Geyer

3. The geography and geology of plastics: their environmental distribution and fate Sarah Gabbott, Sarah Key, Catherine Russell, Yasmin Yohan and Jan Zalasiewicz

4. Biobased plastics Stephan Kabasci

5. Biodegradable plastics Maja Rujnic Havstad

6. Current industry position on plastic production and recycling Edward Kosior and Jonathan Mitchell

7. Plastic waste in the terrestrial environment Rachel Hurley, Alice Horton, Amy Lusher and Luca Nizzetto

8. The environmental impacts of plastic pollution Natalie A. Welden

9. Microplastics: from origin to impacts Natalie A. Welden and Amy Lusher

10. Textiles production and end-of-life management options Andreas Bartl

11. Mechanical recycling of packaging waste Alexander Feil and Thomas Pretz

12. Blast furnace feedstock and coke oven chemical feedstock Seiji Nomura

13. Chemical routes for recyclingddissolving, catalytic, and thermochemical technologies Maija Pohjakallio and Tommi Vuorinen

14. Conversion of plastic waste to fuel Mohanraj Chandran, Senthilkumar Tamilkolundu and Chandrasekar Murugesan

15. The treatment of plastic in automobile shredder residue Alfons Buekens and Trevor M. Letcher

16. Solutions to the plastic waste problem on land and in the oceans Edward Kosior and Irene Crescenzi

17. Plastics we cannot live without Sharon George

18. Secondary plastic productsdexamples and market trends Maija Pohjakallio

19. Plastic waste in a circular economy John N. Hahladakis, Eleni Iacovidou and Spyridoula Gerassimidou

20. Ecological and health issues of plastic waste Cayla R. Cook and Rolf U. Halden

21. Policy responses to plastic pollution in Asia: summary of a regional gap analysis Lewis Akenji, Magnus Bengtsson, Yasuhiko Hotta, Mizuki Kato and Matthew Hengesbaugh

22. The challenge of plastic pollution in Nigeria Emeka Dumbili and Lesley Henderson

23. Plastic waste in the United Kingdom Libby Peake

24. European Union’s plastic strategy and an impact assessment of the proposed directive on tackling single-use plastics items Tim Elliott, Hannah Gillie and Alice Thomson

About the Author

Professor Trevor Letcher is an Emeritus Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and living in the United Kingdom. He was previously Professor of Chemistry, and Head of Department, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University, and Natal, in South Africa (1969-2004). He has published over 300 papers on areas such as chemical thermodynamic and waste from landfill in peer reviewed journals, and 100 papers in popular science and education journals. Prof. Letcher has edited and/or written 32 major books, of which 22 were published by Elsevier, on topics ranging from future energy, climate change, storing energy, waste, tyre waste and recycling, wind energy, solar energy, managing global warming, plastic waste, renewable energy, and environmental disasters. He has been awarded gold medals by the South African Institute of Chemistry and the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics honoured him with a Festschrift in 2018. He is a life member of both the Royal Society of Chemistry (London) and the South African Institute of Chemistry. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics, and is a Director of the Board of the International Association of Chemical Thermodynamics since 2002.