recycling – Chasing Tales

The economics of remanufacturing

Remanufacturing is a structured industrial process where a used product (the “core”) is disassembled, cleaned, inspected, repaired or upgraded, and reassembled to at least “as‑new” performance, often with a new warranty. It differs from simple repair (which restores function) and recycling (which recovers materials) by preserving the value embedded in complex components like housings, castings, and precision parts.¹

In circular economy terms, remanufacturing is one of the highest‑value loops because it keeps products in use with minimal additional material and energy input. That makes it strategically attractive in sectors where products are capital intensive, long‑lived, and technically durable—think engines, industrial equipment, medical devices, and high‑end electronics.²

Remanufacturing reduces exposure to volatile raw material prices and supply disruptions, a growing concern highlighted in circular economy policy discussions by conserving the bulk of materials in complex products³ and reports indicate that remanufacturing can cut greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds or more compared with producing new parts, making it economically attractive for firms facing carbon constraints or reporting obligations.⁴ This is why policies that push producers to take responsibility for products at end‑of‑life (through take‑back schemes or design requirements) naturally encourage remanufacturing models as they can extract more value from returned goods.⁴ ⁵

Economics
The economics is all about the margins for organisations:

Cost side

Production cost savings: Many empirical and industry studies show remanufacturing can reduce unit production costs by roughly 40–65% compared with making a new product, mainly by reusing major components and cutting material and energy demand. Industry examples like Caterpillar’s “Cat Reman” report remanufactured parts costing 45–85% less to produce than brand‑new equivalents while meeting the same specifications.⁶
Customer price level: Remanufactured products are typically sold at 60–80% of the price of new products, attractive enough to win price‑sensitive customers while still leaving room for solid margins.⁷
Resource and energy savings: Preserving existing components means far less raw material and process energy; some studies and industrial programs report 65–87% cuts in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions relative to new manufacture.⁸

Cost Structures

Predictable core supply, stable technical yield, and cost‑efficient operations are the most important factors in any business working in the remanufacturing sector. These can be divided into three main factors, which are then further subdivided as shown in the list below:

Core acquisition and collection: Remanufacturers must get used products back, through buy‑back programs, deposits, leasing, or authorised channels (approved distribution or collection pathways), which adds logistics, handling, and sometimes incentives to the cost base.⁹ Economic models and case studies show that profitability is highly sensitive to the “core return rate”: low or erratic returns undermine capacity utilisation and can drive up unit costs.¹⁰ Interestingly, research on “seeding” (deliberately placing additional new units into the field to increase future cores) finds that active management of core flows can increase total remanufacturing profits by around 20–40%¹⁰ in some product lines: this means the business depends on both- active new sales, and a specific life of the products which are being sold.
- From an economic perspective, the supply of cores is not an exogenous input but an intertemporal decision variable. New products placed into the market today become the core inventory available for remanufacturing in the future, linking current sales decisions to future production capacity. Formal models show that firms may rationally increase new product sales, adjust leasing terms, or subsidise returns in order to secure a predictable flow of future cores, even when short-term margins are lower. The profitability of remanufacturing therefore depends on managing a stock of recoverable products over time rather than on one-period cost comparisons. When core returns are volatile or poorly controlled, remanufacturing capacity cannot be fully utilised. Unit costs rise and the apparent economic advantage shrinks, even if average cost savings look attractive on paper.
Core quality and yield: Not all returned products are economically remanufacturable; if too many cores fail inspection or require heavy rework, the effective cost advantage shrinks.¹⁰ Models that combine technical constraints with cost and collection rates show that limited component durability and uncertain core quality can make remanufacturing unprofitable unless screened and priced correctly.¹¹
- A further economic complication is uncertainty. Unlike new manufacturing, where inputs are standardized, remanufacturing faces stochastic variation in both core quality and remanufacturing cost. Inspection and testing therefore act as economic screening investments rather than mere technical steps: firms incur upfront costs to reveal information about whether a core should be remanufactured, downgraded, or scrapped. Economic models frame this as an option-value problem, where remanufacturing decisions are deferred until uncertainty is resolved. Even when average remanufacturing costs are low, high variance in core condition can reduce expected profits and lead firms to reject a substantial share of returns. This helps explain why observed remanufacturing volumes are often lower than simple cost‑savings calculations would predict.
Process Complexity: Disassembly, inspection, testing, and reassembly require specialised skills and flexible processes, which can raise overhead relative to straight‑through new manufacturing.¹²
Overheads: Since remanufacturing has extra process steps (process complexity), overhead is often a larger share of total cost than in straightforward new manufacturing.¹³

Revenue side

Margin structure: If a new product sells for 100 monetary units and costs 70 to make, the margin is 30; a remanufactured equivalent might sell for 70–80 and cost only 30–40, producing a margin in the same range or better.⁶
New customer segments: Lower price points allow firms to address more price‑sensitive markets, geographies with lower purchasing power, or customers who would otherwise buy used or off‑brand products.⁹

A central economic tension in remanufacturing is cannibalisation: every remanufactured unit sold potentially displaces a sale of a new product. Economic models consistently show, however, that remanufacturing can increase total firm profit when it functions as a form of price discrimination rather than simple substitution. By offering a lower-priced remanufactured product, firms can capture demand from customers with lower willingness to pay who would otherwise buy used, grey-market, or competitor products, while preserving higher margins on new products for less price-sensitive customers. In this equilibrium, remanufactured products expand the market rather than erode it, provided the price gap between new and remanufactured goods is carefully managed. This logic explains why OEMs often restrict remanufacturing volumes or channels even when unit margins are attractive: the optimal remanufacturing rate is determined not by production cost alone, but by its interaction with new-product pricing and demand segmentation.

Market Structures
At the moment, remanufacturing markets tend to be fragmented and dominated by many small third‑party firms, with pockets of oligopoly or even monopoly power (A monopoly is a market structure where one firm dominates the entire market supply, and an Oligopoly is a market structure with only a few suppliers in the market rather than many) around strong brands and OEM‑controlled (OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer) take‑back systems. The exact structure depends on who remanufactures (OEM vs independent), how products are collected, and how new and remanufactured products compete in closed‑loop supply chains.¹⁴ ¹⁵

From an industrial-economics standpoint, the persistence of fragmented remanufacturing markets reflects the shape of remanufacturing cost curves. While new manufacturing often exhibits strong economies of scale, remanufacturing benefits from scale only up to a point. Input heterogeneity, variable inspection effort, and the need for flexible processes limit the gains from large-scale standardisation. As volume increases, coordination and screening costs rise, flattening the cost curve and reducing the competitive advantage of very large firms. These structural features help explain why remanufacturing markets tend to support many small and mid-sized firms alongside selective OEM participation, rather than converging toward high concentration.

In remanufacturing, market structure is usually discussed along three dimensions:¹⁶

Industry concentration: how many firms remanufacture a given product, and how large the biggest players are.
Vertical structure in the closed‑loop supply chain: which tiers (OEM, retailer, specialist remanufacturer, collector) perform remanufacturing and who controls access to cores (used products).
Horizontal competition: how new and remanufactured products compete (prices, perceived quality, channels), often modeled with monopoly, duopoly or oligopoly game‑theoretic frameworks.

These structures are shaped by cost savings from remanufacturing, consumer valuation of remanufactured products, regulatory pressure, and how easy it is to access used products (cores).

Empirical industry structures¹⁶
Across sectors such as automotive parts, industrial machinery, electronics and heavy equipment, studies and market reports converge on a broadly fragmented structure with a long tail of small non‑OEM remanufacturers and a smaller number of large OEMs and global service providers.

Key empirical patterns:

Automotive parts: global automotive parts remanufacturing is characterised as fragmented, with many regional and local remanufacturers, plus major OEM programs (e.g., engines, gearboxes, turbochargers).¹⁷
Industrial machinery and heavy equipment: growth is strong, but the market still has many specialised firms; OEMs, dealer networks and third‑party remanufacturers often coexist, sometimes in parallel closed‑loop chains.¹⁸
Overall EU/US picture: an EU‑level study notes a skewed structure with “a significant number of smaller non‑OEMs” and relatively few large OEM‑affiliated remanufacturers.

This leads to typical hybrid structures:

Many small firms competing in price and service quality for commodified parts.
Local monopolies around niche technologies or proprietary know‑how.
Regional oligopolies in popular product lines (e.g. certain automotive components).

What’s happening in India?
India’s remanufacturing story is still nascent and uneven, but it is being pushed forward indirectly by waste‑management laws, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules for e‑waste, plastics and batteries, and the historic strength of the kabadiwala / scrap‑dealer ecosystem. Most circular‑economy action on the ground still looks like repair, reuse and informal recycling rather than full OEM‑style remanufacturing, yet the latest e‑waste rules and their refurbishing‑certificate mechanism create legal hooks that remanufacturing‑type businesses can use.¹⁹ India doesn’t yet have a “Remanufacturing Act”, but multiple waste rules create incentives and legal categories that overlap with remanufacturing.

E‑waste (Management) Rules²⁰

The 2022 Rules:

Put legal responsibility on producers, manufacturers, refurbishers and recyclers of listed electrical and electronic equipment to meet quantified EPR targets for e‑waste, using a central online portal.
Require all these actors (including refurbishers) to register on the CPCB EPR portal, report flows of products and e‑waste, and obtain authorisations before operating.
Explicitly recognise refurbishing as a distinct activity: registered refurbishers can extend the life of products, send any residual e‑waste only to registered recyclers, and generate refurbishing certificates that allow producers to defer part of their EPR obligation into later years.

The 2024 Amendment Rules keep the 2022 structure but tune how the system actually works:

They add a new rule 9A that lets the central government relax timelines for filing returns “in public interest or for effective implementation”, acknowledging practical compliance bottlenecks.
They refine definitions (including “dismantler”) and insert new sub‑rules in rule 15 that allow the government to create platforms for exchange/transfer of EPR certificates and empower CPCB to set floor and ceiling prices for those certificates, tying prices to environmental‑compensation logic.

That last bit is important: it means refurbishing and recycling certificates now sit inside a semi‑regulated compliance market, rather than in a completely opaque bilateral space. For any firm doing serious refurbishment or remanufacturing of electronics, the financial value of each “saved” device is no longer just the resale price; it also includes the value of refurbishing certificates producers will need to meet their EPR targets.

One of my favourite things about waste management in India is the local kabadiwala (waste-person) system, where a person who runs a reverse-logistics business comes to people’s homes and BUYS the waste they wish to remove from their homes. The kabadiwala networks that move e‑waste and scrap in cities haven’t changed because of the 2024 amendment—but the way the state talks about integrating them has become more concrete.

Official statements on the 2022 rules repeatedly say the new EPR regime is meant to “channelize the informal sector to the formal sector”, by making collection and processing possible only via registered producers, refurbishers and recyclers.²¹ Circular‑economy concept notes for municipal waste still highlight that informal workers and kabadiwalas do the heavy lifting of collection and separation, and must be integrated into contracts, data systems and formal infrastructure.²² Case studies on informal e‑waste collectors (kabadiwalas) emphasise that they remain the primary collection channel for household e‑waste, but usually sell to small dismantlers who operate outside the 2022–2024 EPR framework.²³

Against that backdrop, the 2022–2024 e‑waste regime offers two big levers for integration:

Partnerships between registered refurbishers/recyclers and kabadiwala networks: the law doesn’t mention kabadiwalas by name, but nothing stops a registered refurbisher from building sourcing and sharing arrangements with informal collectors, bringing their material into the formal portal system.²⁴
Data and platform logic: the new certificate‑trading platforms and CPCB portals are building a data spine for reverse logistics; if cities and social enterprises plug informal actors into that spine, kabadiwalas become the front‑end of a traceable, compliance‑generating remanufacturing pipeline instead of sitting outside it.²⁵

In practice, though, most of what happens today is still repair, cannibalisation for parts, and low‑value recycling. The regulatory architecture is now sophisticated enough to support high‑value remanufacturing and refurbishment at scale, but the hard work is social and institutional: defining quality standards, building trust in “remanufactured” products, and finding ways to bring kabadiwalas and other informal workers into those new value chains without erasing their livelihoods.

Sources

Materials: Plastics

“Plastic” is the generic name of a large group of materials. Conventional plastics are made from fossil fuels, however there are now an increasing number of bioplastics available. This post will be about fossil plastics.

Plastics are organic polymers- this means that while other molecules may be added to their chemical composition if required (to create different properties), they are always composed of hydrogen and oxygen molecules.¹ Polymers are large chain-like molecules formed of smaller molecules called monomers², which may be natural or synthetic, and their chief quality of interest is that they can link together to form polymers.³ Polymers can be formed of between two and seven monomer units.³

The first synthetic plastic was invented in 1907 and called Bakelite.⁴ Since then, it is estimated that 8.3–9.2 billion metric tons of plastic were produced between 1950 and 2017, with over 400 million metric tons being produced annually in recent years.⁵

The Good

These enormous production numbers are because plastics are a highly versatile group of materials, and are used in every industry due to their properties- they are easy to mould, can be strong or flexible as required, are both electrical and thermal insulators, lightweight, durable, chemically stable and many are corrosion resistant. Their invention has been a boon to humanity in a variety of ways, an example of which is their usage in the medical industry, which has revolutionised medicine and allowed it to be accessible to many more people- from basic gloves, to prosthetics, to blood bags, plastics are ubiquitous in medicine and pharmaceuticals.⁶

Yet the medical industry is ultimately a minuscule consumer of plastic. 436.66 million tonnes (Mt) of plastics were traded in 2022, with final products alone accounting for 111 Mt.⁷ The vast majority (between 31% and 40%) of plastics are used today to package products, followed by the construction industry at ~17%, the automotive sector accounts for ~9-18% of global plastic, followed by household and consumer products which take up ~13% of the plastic produced, and electrical and electronic products with ~9%. The residual plastic, which comes to less than 10% of the total production, is used in a variety of sectors, including medical equipment, road signs, etc.⁷^{8 9}

S. No.	Name	You’ve Used This In
1	Polyethylene (PE or LDPE)¹⁰	Plastic bags, cling film for food storage, extrusion coatings, insulation for wires, etc.
	Medium-Density Polyethylene (MDPE)¹¹ ¹²	Shrink wraps, storage tanks, road blocks, traffic cones, fuel tanks, etc.
2	High-density polyethylene (HDPE)¹⁰	Pipes, construction material, insulation, plastic bottles, containers, containers for chemical preparations like shampoos and medical supplies, toys, geomembranes, fuel tanks, and swimming pool equipment are some uses.
3	Linear Low-Density Polyethylene (LLDPE)¹³	Shopping bags, dustbin liners, bubble wrap, stretch and, shrink wrap, plant pots, pipes and tubing, fluid reservoirs, automotive consoles, toys, kayaks, paddleboards, detergent containers, etc.
4	Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE)¹⁰	Pipes, valves, bulletproof material, aircraft and spacecraft components, battery separators, sail cloths, helmets, Conveyor belts, etc.
5	Polypropylene (PP)^{15 16}	Food containers, bottles, plastic bags, car parts such as dashboards or bumpers, disposable syringes, surgical tools, non woven fabrics, fibre and textiles, battery cases, wire insulation, pipes, roofing material, outdoor furniture, etc.
6	Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)¹⁷	Pipes, credit cards, IV bags, windows, clamshell and other types of packaging, rain wear, shower curtains, etc.
7	Polystyrene (PS)¹⁸	Disposable cutlery, construction material, seat cushions in cars, automotive door panels, CD cases, foam cups, shock lining in helmets, packaging, insulation material, diagnostic tools, laboratory apparatus, and other uses.
8	Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)^{19 20}	Beverage bottles, food backaging, clothing and textile, other packaging, disposable cups, photovoltaic parts, gear housing, greenhouses, and other applications.
9	Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS)²⁰	There are more than 6,000 grades of ABS produced today. LEGO bricks, hutomotive parts, household appliances, consumer goods, walking sticks, 3D printing, medical devices, pipes and fittings, sports equipment, etc.
10	Polyurethane (PU)^{21 22}	Automotive components such as dashboards, mud flaps, car door panels, etc., footwear, medical materials, insulation, paint, coatings, aerospace components, agricultural products, cutting sticks, gaskets, Diablo rollers, manufacturing industries, mining, quarrying, oil and gas sectors, and other uses.
11	Polycarbonate (PC)²³	Coffee machines, food processors, automotive headlamp bezel and lenses, hair driers, construction material, surgical instruments, blood reservoirs, protect eye gears, etc.
12	Polylactic Acid (PLA)²⁴	This polymer is biodegradable, and degrates into lactic acid. Used in medical implants, food packaging, engineering plastics, drink packaging, disposable cutlery, shrink wrap, 3D printing.
13	Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol (PETG)²⁵	3D printing filament, Consumer electronics, automotive parts, construction material, art and other customised products, etc.
14	Nylon²⁶	Ropes, automotive parts, workout wear, swimwear, rain protective wear, guitar strings, nets, and many other uses.
15	Ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA)^{27 28}	Shoe soles, foam mats, adhesives, protective padding, solar panels, automotive interiors components like mats and cushions, sports equipment, toys, etc.
16	Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)²⁹	Automotive parts, animal identification tags, textile coatings, garments, adhesives, military equipment, conveyor belts, seals, and other uses.

A few commonly used plastics

The global demand for plastics has quadrupled over the past decades⁷ and the OECD suggests that under the business-as-usual scenario it is projected to triple by 2060, and of this only 12% is likely to be secondary, or recycled plastic.³⁰ The entire plastics market was valued at $712 billion in 2023 and is projected to continue growing, and thus supports millions of jobs at the moment: As of 2023, the U.S. plastics industry directly employed over 1 million people in the United States, with total plastics-related jobs (such as sales, etc. in the U.S. reaching up to 1.55 million.³¹ In India, the plastics industry comprises over 50,000 processors and employs over 5 million people directly and indirectly³². It’s also good to remember that the industry does not only consist of direct plastics manufacturing and usage, but has also made several other activities possible in other industries which would not otherwise have been possible (the example of the medical industry is discussed above), thus also adding to jobs in those sectors. In totality, it is approximated that there were 7,637,284 people employed in just the Global Plastic Product & Packaging Manufacturing as of 2024.³³

The Bad

On the flip side, this gargantuan human appetite for plastics has caused a macro and micro plastic buildup in the planet.³⁴ According to the United Nations, 51 trillion microplastic particles – 500 times more than stars in our galaxy – litter the seas. They go on to say that by 2050, oceans will have more plastic than fish 99% of seabirds alive will consume microplastic if ongoing trends of plastic pollution are not abated³⁵– and microplastics are now increasingly being found inside humans as well.^{36 37}

Plastics are now in our seafood, the air we breathe³⁸, our tap water³⁸, and even in our fetuses³⁷. In fact, a study approximates that the average adult consumes approximately 2,000 microplastics per year simply by consuming salt. But plastics being found in our systems are a new phenomenon, and therefore are poorly studied. We don’t yet know even the short term impacts of being made up, to a small extent, of our plastic- except they may just be contributing to preterm births³⁷, and hundreds of thousands of annual heart disease deaths³⁹. The OECD has stated that plastic leakage to the environment is likely to double to 44 million tonnes (Mt) annually, while the build-up of plastics in aquatic environments will more than triple, and greenhouse gas emissions from the plastics lifecycle will more than double, from 1.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Gt CO₂e) to 4.3 Gt CO₂e further aggravating environmental and human toxicity.³⁰

In 2022, only 2% of plastics produced were made from renewable sources- of the remaining 98%, 44% was derived from coal, 40% from petroleum, 8% from natural gas, 5% from coke and 1% from other sources.⁷ In 2019, plastic production amounted to 5.3% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that year, or ~2.24 billion mt of carbon dioxide equivalent. Of this, extracting feedstock fossil fuels used accounted for 20% of the 2.24 billion mt, creating monomers for 26%, and refining hydrocarbons and producing other plastic ingredients kick out 29%.^{40 41} This spotlights the first of plastic’s environmental issues- even though plastics result in lower greenhouse gas emissions throughout their life cycle compared to alternative materials like metals or glass⁷, as long as they are extracted from mineral fuels, they will continue to have an outsized impact on the planet, because most of their GHG emissions are produced not during their lifecycle as plastics, but well before they come into existence, at the extraction, monomerisation, and refining stages. Upto 70% of the fossil fuel used in plastic creation comes from the raw materials used in production, and not the electricity used in processing them.⁴² Another way to look at this is that in a 2018 study it was determined that recycled PET, recycled HDPE, and recycled PP consume 79%, 88%, and 88% less total energy respectively than producing virgin PET, HDPE, and PP⁴³– So while plastics live a virtuous life, the physical and chemical processes during their conception, birth, and post mortem are traumatic for our planet and all living beings on it.

In 2024, humans were projected to have generated 220 million tonnes of plastic waste, an increase of 7.11% from 2021.⁴⁴ in the same year, Greyparrot.ai, detected 40 billion waste objects at 55 facilities across 20 countries in North America, Europe and Asia. They tracked over 35,000 tonnes of recyclable plastics which were not recycled, and also detected clear plastic containers (like thermoform packaging), and over 7 billion flexible film objects.⁴⁵ The Alliance to End Plastic Waste estimated in 2023 that at least 360 million tonnes of plastic waste are generated annually, and of that 70% remains uncollected, or was improperly disposed off, leading to leaks into the environment, landfill dumping, open burning.⁴⁶ Researchers have estimated that ~34% of global plastic waste is incinerated, which is emerging as the most practiced method for disposal.⁷ About 40% of plastic waste is still fed to landfills (a method of disposal found to be shrinking), and only 9% is recycled.⁷

Incineration is simply the burning of waste matter, also known as Waste-to-energy (WTE), Thermal treatment, Energy-from-waste, or Energy recovery. When burnt, plastic remembers its fossil origins and generates high temperatures. The combustion is often open, without any way to capture the toxins released.⁴⁷ Without plastic as part of municipal waste, municipal waste management systems have been known to add coal⁴⁸ to the waste mix to help achieve the kind of temperatures plastic waste achieves when set fire to⁴⁹. Thus, firstly, municipal waste management plants have an incentive to encourage plastic waste (so they don’t spend on fuel/ they spend less on fuel). Waste incineration is also known to produce carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, metal oxides, and metal vapours, fly ash, bottom ash, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls, and black carbon.⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ Contaminants also get into the soil and groundwater and frequently contain additives (such as fillers, plasticizers, flame retardants, colorants, stabilizers, lubricants, foaming agents, antistatic agents, and metals, including cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, cobalt, tin, and zinc), in addition to adhesives and coatings.⁴⁷ In 2019 CIEL estimated that just burning plastic packaging in the open releases 2.9 Mt CO2e of greenhouse gases into air per ton of plastic packaging⁵⁰. Further, the open burning of plastics is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, respiratory issues, neurological disorders, nausea, skin rashes, numbness or tingling in the fingers, headaches, memory loss, confusion, cancer and birth defects.⁴⁷

The second method of plastic disposal mentioned are landfills. A landfill is an ecological system, where the inputs are solid waste and water, and the outputs are leachate (The liquid produced when water percolates through any permeable material) and gas produced by the joint action of biological, chemical, and physical processes. Leachate Recycling landfills are designed to capture and recycle aqueous leachate to prevent or reduce the environmental leakage of potentially harmful waste or degradation residues. Controlled Contaminant Release landfills allow the leachate to migrate to the environment under monitored conditions to prevent harmful events. Unrestricted Contaminant Release landfills, which are older waste dumps, have no controls on leachate or environmental contamination.⁵¹ There is no method of knowing what is ultimately happening inside landfills, however, due to the fluctuating temperatures (reaching as high as 60 to 90 °C) and pH (4.5–9), deep-seated fires, physical stress, and compaction, as well as limited microbial activity, landfilled microplastics are likely to continue to fragment into nanoplastics. While most polymers and plastics remain unchanged in landfills, some may degrade into further fragments or biodegrade to water and either are carbon dioxide in aerobic environments or a mixture of carbon dioxide, methane, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in an anaerobic environment.⁵¹

This brings us to our third plastic problem- plastic exists everywhere, including places it shouldn’t be in. Plastic litter is categorised as macroplastics (those bits of plastic detritus which are larger than 5 mm), microplastics (the infamous plastic discard sibling, coming in at <5 mm), and nanoplastics (ultrafine particles <100 nm).⁵² Macroplastics made up 88% of the global plastic waste in 2019, tallying up to ~20 million metric tons in that year. This is the plastic that breaks down into smaller bits due to physical and chemical processes- such as incineration, leaks from landfills, interations with biotic and abiotic forces, etc.⁵² ⁵³

The Solutions

In order of what I think will have the quickest impact/ be the easiest to do:

1. Clean up macro plastic waste, and fine littering.

2. Mandating superior waste sorting, so that recyclable plastics are removed from being incinerator or landfill food. This will require more than just regulation- waste segregators, whether human or AI, will have to be taught how to identify recyclable plastics, which at the moment are PET, HDPE, PP, LDPE, and PVC, with varying levels of ease⁵⁴ ^{55 56} ,and the number of recycling facilities will have to be increased around the world for all kinds of plastics.

3. Ban (or tax) single use plastics, including those that cannot be recycled (in theory all plastics can be recycled).

4. Investment in and policies to encourage biodegradable plastics.

5. Reduce consumption. Of course this will require a cultural shift, and goes against our general capitalist consumerist values, but less consumption leads to less plastic used for making, packaging, transporting, installing, using, and disposing off the product.

6. Have some compassion- plastics have made all our lives better, but especially so for disadvantaged people. This mess was created over a century, so we can take a few years to sort it out without demonising or causing problems to those who need help the most.^{57 58 59 60}

Sources:

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