Plastic is moving quickly from our shops to our bins
Coastal city residents would like to do more to reduce their single-use plastic waste and they are trying to recycle more, even trying to recycle items that simply can’t be recycled, often called “wish-cycling”.
Peer-Reviewed PublicationCoastal city residents would like to do more to reduce their single-use plastic waste and they are trying to recycle more, even trying to recycle items that simply can’t be recycled, often called “wish-cycling”.
But they feel unable to do so due to the current infrastructure challenges and accessibility barriers they face, a new report has found.
The study has also found that whilst young people are concerned about the use of plastic, their consumer behaviour often contradicts their beliefs.
Researchers from the University of Portsmouth’s Revolution Plastics initiative surveyed 400 permanent residents in the city. They were questioned on their plastic consumption, purchase, use and disposal habits.
Researchers examined what influenced people’s attitudes and behaviours towards plastic and what motivated or constrained their ability to reduce, reuse and recycle what they use.
90 per cent of people agreed it was important to recycle and 83 per cent felt that littering was a serious problem that needed addressing in Portsmouth. Results indicate that if there were more recycling options available, 79 per cent would recycle more.
However, there were obvious barriers to recycling, and people felt there was a lack of information and opportunity for recycling, with 65 per cent of people admitting they often did not know how or where to recycle plastic items.
Portsmouth is a densely populated coastal city, with 5315 people per sq. km in 2020 (Office for National Statistics 2021). This makes it the second most densely populated city in the UK after London (5727 people per sq. km in 2020; Office for National Statistics 2021).
Portsmouth is also the UK’s only island city, and the immediate proximity of the city to the ocean carries multiple pollution risks, including the erosion of historic landfill sites and beach litter.
Portsmouth has a limited recycling kerbside collection system. Currently, only paper, card, plastic bottles, metal cans, tins and aerosols are recycled (Portsmouth City Council 2022). The current recycling rate of all waste for Portsmouth is 24.7 per cent, one of the lowest in the UK and considerably lower than the national average of 46.2 per cent (Letsrecycle 2021; DEFRA 2021).
Professor Steve Fletcher, Director of the Global Plastics Policy Centre and Revolution Plastics at the University of Portsmouth says: “As both a coastal city and the second most densely populated environment in the UK, Portsmouth can provide critical insights into the role of plastics in everyday life.
“These include the challenges of managing plastic waste in a tightly packed urban setting. Understanding how people use plastic items within households is important to inform effective policy development, particularly with the emerging and developing global plastic treaty.”
Another important finding was the impact of age on the results. The 31–50 years age group were found to be more regularly shopping in Portsmouth zero-waste shops than their counterparts, while the oldest age group (over 50 years) reported being less aware and less willing to shop in these retailers. Younger respondents (less than 30 years) were more concerned about plastic waste entering the ocean than their older counterparts (over 50 years).
Broadly speaking the younger residents were more concerned about the issue of single use plastic waste, however this was not backed up by their plastic purchase and use habits. Conversely, the older generation, who claimed not to be as concerned, often purchased fewer plastic items, particularly plastic bags. 85 per cent of respondents aged 51 years and above purchased zero plastic bags in an average week, compared to 39 per cent of the youngest age group (less than 30 years).
Other social and economic demographic variables such as a resident’s location within Portsmouth, income and vehicle ownership were potential indicators of individuals' attitudes, accessibility and incentives towards reducing plastic purchases and recycling their plastic waste.
Lead researcher, Stephanie Northen from Revolution Plastics at the University of Portsmouth, says: “Our findings show that although consumers have a role to play in plastic use and recycling, their behaviour is heavily influenced by factors which are largely out of their control, such as price and availability.
“Ultimately it is not consumers who should be responsible for systemic change. This responsibility lies with those who are in charge of plastic policy.”
Full report available here.
JOURNAL
Sustainability Science
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
From shops to bins: a case study of consumer attitudes and behaviours towards plastics in a UK coastal city
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
30-Jan-2023
UMass Lowell plastics recycling,
engineering workforce initiatives
awarded $1M
Projects aim to redirect recyclable materials
Grant and Award AnnouncementIMAGE: PLASTICS ENGINEERING MASTER’S STUDENT AND RESEARCH ASSISTANT SARAH PERRY, LEFT, WORKS WITH PROFESSOR MEG SOBKOWICZ-KLINE IN THE LAB AT BALL HALL ON UMASS LOWELL’S NORTH CAMPUS IN LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS. view more
CREDIT: EDWIN AGUIRRE FOR UMASS LOWELL
Jan. 31, 2023
For Immediate Release
At least 85%, a staggering figure, of plastic waste generated in the U.S. went to landfills in 2021 while just 5 to 6% was recycled. Two UMass Lowell researchers want to reverse these statistics.
Plastics Engineering Professor Meg Sobkowicz-Kline and Assistant Teaching Professor Akshay Kokil are embarking on campaigns to redirect these recyclable materials with the help of a combined $1 million in research grants. Sobkowicz-Kline and Kokil were each awarded $500,000 grants – National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology, respectively – at the close of 2022.
Sobkowicz-Kline won a two-year, $500,000 NSF award for her project, “Melt Mastication for Upcycling of Polyolefins,” which will help advance the development of a new manufacturing process to ease the recycling of plastic film packaging – the ubiquitous thin, flexible material used in grocery bags, zip-top storage bags, dry-cleaning bags among other applications.
She explained current plastic films cannot be recycled because they consist of multiple layers of different plastics and thus are challenging to collect, separate, clean and reprocess.
“While chemical recycling methods are rapidly evolving, these approaches require high energy input, and the materials’ intrinsic value is lost,” she said. “New concepts are needed to increase the recycling rate and reduce the amount of waste plastic films ending up in landfills, incinerators and the environment,” she says.
A team of UMass Lowell researchers, headed by Sobkowicz-Kline, is studying a new process to produce plastic film made of a single polymer, but retains the properties that make plastic packaging so attractive, including its low cost, light weight, toughness and effective barrier protection against oxygen and moisture to help maintain food quality and flavor.
She added: “Our research has the potential to increase the plastics recycling rate, especially for films, while also maintaining the important benefits of flexible plastic packaging, including food safety, convenience and low carbon footprint.”
Fellow UMass Lowell plastics engineering Professor Dave Kazmer is a co-principal investigator in the project, along with professors E. Bryan Coughlin and Alan Lesser of UMass Amherst.
Awarded a three-year, $500,000 NIST grant, Kokil’s research will support his ongoing effort to develop a future workforce to grow a circular economy for plastics. The focus will be on moving away from single-use plastics in favor of a “closed loop” system in which the lifetime of plastic materials is prolonged as they are used repeatedly, repaired and recycled. In this perspective, the materials are discarded only as a last resort.
“Making plastics more sustainable and transitioning them to a functioning circular economy has become all the more important, considering the scope of their use in our modern society,” said Kokil. His project, Plastics Adaptable for Circular Economy (PACE), aims to create, test and disseminate cross-disciplinary, hands-on modules about plastics sustainability and circularity.
“These modules, developed by all plastics engineering faculty members, will help expand the knowledge base and improve critical thinking skills of the nation’s undergraduate and graduate students,” said Kokil. “With a technically knowledgeable workforce, people will be empowered to make prudent choices and systemic changes in the plastics industry, such that even in a market-driven condition, this important class of material can become truly sustainable.”
Kokil is among the scientists and engineers from five research institutions across the country who each received $500,000 in funding from NIST under its first Training for Improving Plastics Circularity Grant Program. In addition to UMass Lowell, the other awardees include Arizona State University, Pittsburg State University in Kansas, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Southern California.
The PACE project is co-led by members of the UMass Lowell plastics engineering department including Sobkowicz-Kline, Kazmer and Assistant Professor Davide Masato. Jill Lohmeier, UMass Lowell School of Education associate professor, will perform in-classroom learning outcome evaluations for PACE.
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