Plastic Waste and Recycling

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.

• 1. Introduction to plastic waste and recycling Trevor M. Letcher2. Production, use, and fate of synthetic polymersRoland Geyer3. The geography and geology of plastics: their environmentaldistribution and fateSarah Gabbott, Sarah Key, Catherine Russell, Yasmin Yohan andJan Zalasiewicz4. Biobased plasticsStephan Kabasci5. Biodegradable plasticsMaja Rujnic Havstad6. Current industry position on plastic production and recyclingEdward Kosior and Jonathan Mitchell7. Plastic waste in the terrestrial environmentRachel Hurley, Alice Horton, Amy Lusher and Luca Nizzetto8. The environmental impacts of plastic pollutionNatalie A. Welden9. Microplastics: from origin to impactsNatalie A. Welden and Amy Lusher10. Textiles production and end-of-life management optionsAndreas Bartl11. Mechanical recycling of packaging wasteAlexander Feil and Thomas Pretz12. Blast furnace feedstock and coke oven chemical feedstockSeiji Nomura13. Chemical routes for recyclingddissolving, catalytic, andthermochemical technologiesMaija Pohjakallio and Tommi Vuorinen14. Conversion of plastic waste to fuelMohanraj Chandran, Senthilkumar Tamilkolundu andChandrasekar Murugesan15. The treatment of plastic in automobile shredder residueAlfons Buekens and Trevor M. Letcher16. Solutions to the plastic waste problem on land and in theoceansEdward Kosior and Irene Crescenzi17. Plastics we cannot live withoutSharon George18. Secondary plastic productsdexamples and market trendsMaija Pohjakallio19. Plastic waste in a circular economyJohn N. Hahladakis, Eleni Iacovidou and Spyridoula Gerassimidou20. Ecological and health issues of plastic wasteCayla R. Cook and Rolf U. Halden21. Policy responses to plastic pollution in Asia: summary of aregional gap analysisLewis Akenji, Magnus Bengtsson, Yasuhiko Hotta, Mizuki Kato andMatthew Hengesbaugh22. The challenge of plastic pollution in NigeriaEmeka Dumbili and Lesley Henderson23. Plastic waste in the United KingdomLibby Peake24. European Union’s plastic strategy and an impact assessmentof the proposed directive on tackling single-use plastics itemsTim Elliott, Hannah Gillie and Alice Thomson