The global economy seems to be sinking in the ocean of plastic wastes. Plastic circular economy has been prescribed the key panacea with recycling as its key strategy. The issue of sustainable plastic circular economy has so far been the challenge amid the production of virgin plastics. The aim of this study is to assess the sustainability of plastic circular economy with complete dependence on plastic wastes.Sustainability assessment criterion was based on plastic waste generation and recycling transitional probabilities. A closed system is assumed to ensure that no new virgin plastic is produced. Data was obtained from various publications of the Plastic Europe; and other research publications on plastic waste management. Sustainability was then assessed under four scenarios; joint force of plastic waste incineration and discarding, plastic waste discarding without incineration, plastic waste incineration without discarding; and complete riddance of plastic waste incineration and discarding. It was revealed that the already cumulated volume of global annual plastic waste generated can sustain plastic circular economy in a closed system only if plastic waste incineration and discarding are completely prohibited. The study is an indispensable tool for policy formulation in the area of waste management.
The panacea to the global challenge of plastic waste management is the transition towards plastic circular economy, which can be sustained through tailor-made management strategies. However, cutting-edge strategic solutions are constrained by inadequate data due to inadequate plastic-based predictive models. This paper presents an improved version of an existing two-state cyclical dynamic closed (CDC) model. The CDC model was formulated using a homogeneous linear system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and was modified by introducing a separation target which plays an essential role in determining both quantity and quality of recycled plastics. The Laplace transforms technique was the main analytic solution technique used. Values of the parameters were computed using the global plastic data applied for the existing CDC model, and with a technique termed the nth-order product derivative proximity, alternating pairs of initial values were selected each for the global annual plastic production and the global annual plastic waste generation. The validation process of the new CDC model was accomplished using the root mean squared error (RMSE) and the mean average percentage error (MAPE), which are measures of the model’s predictive power. Comparatively, RMSEs of the new CDC model were smaller than the RMSEs of the existing CDC model. MAPEs for the new CDC model were 6.5% and 7% (as against 13% and 18% in the existing model) respectively for the global annual plastic: production and waste generation, indicating that the new model predicts with 93.5% and 93% degrees of accuracy respectively for the global annual plastic: production and waste generation. Therefore, the new CDC model has outperformed the existing CDC model in terms of predictive power, and thus, establishing the new CDC model as an improved version of the existing one. The model can therefore make impactful policy decisions for sustainable plastic waste management thereby aiding to achieve the transition towards circular economy in plastic waste management.
The global economy seems to be sinking in the ocean of plastic wastes. Plastic circular economy has been prescribed the key panacea with recycling as its key strategy. The issue of sustainable plastic circular economy has so far been the challenge amid the production of virgin plastics. The aim of this study is to assess the sustainability of plastic circular economy with complete dependence on plastic wastes. Sustainability assessment criterion was based on plastic waste generation and recycling transitional probabilities. A closed system is assumed to ensure that no new virgin plastic is produced. Data was obtained from various publications of the Plastic Europe; and other research publications on plastic waste management. Sustainability was then assessed under four scenarios; joint force of plastic waste incineration and discarding, plastic waste discarding without incineration, plastic waste incineration without discarding; and complete riddance of plastic waste incineration and discarding. It was revealed that the already cumulated volume of global annual plastic waste generated can sustain plastic circular economy in a closed system only if plastic waste incineration and discarding are completely prohibited. The study is an indispensable tool for policy formulation in the area of waste management.
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