Plastic

Summary

Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adaptability, plus a wide range of other properties, such as being lightweight, durable, flexible, and inexpensive to produce, has led to its widespread use. Plastics typically are made through human industrial systems. Most modern plastics are derived from fossil fuel-based chemicals like natural gas or petroleum; however, recent industrial methods use variants made from renewable materials, such as corn or cotton derivatives. 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic are estimated to have been made between 1950 and 2017. More than half this plastic has been produced since 2004. In 2020, 400 million tonnes of plastic were produced. If global trends on plastic demand continue, it is estimated that by 2050 annual global plastic production will reach over 1.1 billion

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic

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Origine des microplastiques en eau douce

Aïdatou Sakho

Microplastics in freshwater are becoming of emerging concerns. In Switzerland, some recent studies reveals the microplastics pollution of Swiss lakes and rivers. The aim of the present study is to improve the understanding of the origins of this pollution. The process used was a reviewing of litterature, a field work on the riversides of the Venoge and an analysis of some body care products. Plastics found on the riversides were analysed by infrared spectroscopy FT-IR. The analysis of the body care products permits to evaluate how much quantity of PE they reject in the environment. Actually, PE is the main plastic found in cosmetics. The majority of the plastics found were PP, PS and PE which are also the main components of food wrappers and food containers. Therefore, the consumers seems to be the main responsibles of the pollution. Waste waters are the second most important source of microplastics in freshwaters

2015

Numerous researches showing various environmental impacts are done on marine plastic pollution. In turn the situation for superficial fresh water is poorly known. In order to measure this pollution in Switzerland three different lake samples (lake Geneva, lake Maggiore and lake Constance), beach samples and rejection pellets from limnic birds have been analyzed. The samples are divided into micro- (1-5mm) and macroplastics (>5mm). The plastic’s composition is the following: polyethylene (x̄=62 %, σ=15 %), polypropylene (x̄=21 %, σ=16 %), polystyrene (x̄= 8 %, σ=9 %), polymer mixes (x̄=5 %, σ=7 %), acetate cellulose (x̄=2 %, σ=3 %) and others (x̄= 2 %, σ=4 %). The concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and its metabolites (DDTs), mirex, hexachlorobenzene (HCB), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), nonylphenol (NP) and bisphenol A vary between 1 – 6’000 ng/g, the one for phthalates ranges from 500 – 100’000 ng/g depending on the samples. Strong variations in micro pollutants are observed among the particles. Microplastics show higher concentrations than macroplastics. Furthermore surface water samples tend to have higher concentrations than the ones from beaches. The presence of these micropollutants at the measured doses does not directly respond to the question whether there is an eco-toxicological impact or not.

2014

Nature-inspired Circular-economy Recycling (NaCRe) for Proteins

Simone Giaveri

Since a few decades our planet has been loaded with billion tons of synthetic polymer-based materials, commonly named plastics. The large scale of plastic production, associated with its limited recyclability, are the driving force for the accumulation of such materials into the environment. Garbage patches, i.e. islands of plastics in the ocean, are striking evidences of this issue. A sustainable handling, that is production and disposal, of synthetic polymer-based materials is one of the greatest challenges that humanity has to face.Proteins and nucleic acids are natural polymers. Arguably, Nature produces an amount of such polymers that is higher with respect to man-made polymers. However, these materials do not accumulate into the environment, that is the approach used by Nature to handle these polymers is sustainable. The secret for its sustainaibility lies on the circularity in the materialsâ use. Indeed, proteins and nucleic acids are sequence-defined polymers that undergo depolymerization to monomers, and recycling into new materials by reassembling the so obtained monomers into arbitrarily different sequences. Organisms digest proteins into amino acids. These monomers are in turn polymerized to produce the protein of need, at the time of the protein synthesis.In this thesis we show that this process is achievable outside living organisms. Indeed, we depolymerized structurally different short peptides, and peptides mixtures into their constitutive amino acids, and recycled such monomers into biotechnologically relevant proteins (green, and red fluorescent proteins), by using an amino acid-free cell-free transcription-translation system. We further applied our methodology to recycle proteins with high relevance in materials engineering such as Î²-lactoglobulin films, used for water filtration, or silk fibroin solutions into green fluorescent protein. We were also successful in recycling mixtures composed of short peptides, and technologically relevant proteins into fluorescent proteins, as well as into bioactive enzymes (catechol 2,3-dioxygenase). Finally, we achieved multiple cycles of recycling (two cycles), and we demonstrated that the strategy can be expanded beyond the set of the twenty proteinogenic amino acids.Presented herein is a nature-inspired approach to recycling of soft materials, where unknown mixtures of polymers are recycled into the polymer of need, by the local community, at the time of recycling. The materials are costantly transformed into different ones, without any external feed, and there is no way to distinguish a new polymer from a recycled one. The strength of this method lies in its compatibility with the principles of circular economy.

EPFL2021

Nature-inspired Circular-economy Recycling (NaCRe) for Proteins

Simone Giaveri

EPFL2021