Plastics in a sustainable society - Background paper

A decision taken by the MISTRA board of directors in June 2014 identified “Plastics and the Environment” as an area for investigation with a view to initiating a call for research proposals in the future. The rationale behind this decision was that plastics have become an integral part of our society and lifestyle being prevalent in almost every aspect of our lives. However, despite the high societal benefits plastics evidently provide they also pose a number of environmental and health problems. Recent reports in the media, for instance, tell of additives with endocrine disrupting properties leaching out of plastics and entering the food chain and of plastic waste accumulating in huge quantities in marine environments. The dilemma faced by society due to its reliance on plastics, in turn is also responsible for a depletion in non-renewable resources, places considerable and growing strain on the ecosystems and the environment. These issues must be addressed in terms of finding new sources of materials that are wholly or partially based on renewable resources, finding ways to increase the life cycle of plastics already in the material streams through re-use and recycling, eliminating the stream of plastics finding their way into the environment and eliminating or drastically reducing the levels of toxicity in plastics and additives. Mistra envisages an interdisciplinary research program that will assess the current problems which accompanies the extensive use of plastic with a view to finding solutions leading to an overall reduction of the adverse environmental of plastics. The program should adopt an approach that takes a wide range of aspects into consideration including technical and process developments, patterns of consumption and environmental impact and consequences associated with implementation of new technologies.