Futureproof Your Planet: Beyond Bans and Rethinking plastics for a sustainable future

[@UoMSciEng]

"How can the problem of microplastic shed be improved" We need to better understand the biological and environmental effect of microplastics, while there have been many reports of microplastics being found in food and more recently in human tissues we aren't clear how much of a negative effect this is having. We then need to reduce microplastics in the environment. Currently in the developed world the water treatment processes are effective at removing microplastics from our waste water which limits their transfer to the environment. This will capture microplastics generated from laundry etc. For other microplastics that are formed upon the breakup of plastics in our oceans, sadly these will be very hard to recover. My view is that we should focus on firstly trying to greatly reduce the leakage of plastics into the oceans. Much of this waste leakage happens in the developing world where they might not have effective bin collections etc., here we need to support the establishment of better waste management infrastructure.

[@UoMSciEng]

"Most of people save money by using cheap plastic which are very harmful can we create sustainable plastic at cheap cost. Help!!" This is one of the major current challenges for bioderived plastics, their feedstock is more expensive that petrochemicals. Part of this higher price is due to the fact that petrochemicals are produced at huge scale and the processes have been refined for decades. Bioderived feedstocks will likely become more cost competitive once their scale of production increases.