Plastic Waste Management

Running head: PLASTIC WASTE MANAGEMENT
Plastic Waste Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Review of Literature..................................................................................................................5
Importance of plastic sorting as per recycling.......................................................................5
Methods used for recycling in Australia (Brisbane)..............................................................6
Issue of Landfill by Plastic Waste..........................................................................................7
Current Scenario of Waste Management...............................................................................9
Sorting Plastics into Seven Categories and Recycling.........................................................11
Manual Sorting and Automatic Sorting of Plastics..................................................................13
Management Tools...................................................................................................................15
Conclusion................................................................................................................................19
References................................................................................................................................22
Appendices...............................................................................................................................26
Appendix.1...........................................................................................................................26
Appendix 2...........................................................................................................................28

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Introduction
The issue of plastic waste is one of the most common problems around the different
countries of the world and it is associated with the various other environmental problems as
well. Like other countries of the world, Australia is also facing the same issue and thereby
the environmental condition of the country is also getting worse day by day. Therefore, it can
be stated that in order to make the environment safer, it is vital to address the problem of
plastic waste. To do so, it is essential to manage and sort the plastic wastages scientifically
and adequately. In this regard, it can be stated that, for improving the issue of plastic
wastages in the environment, plastic recycling is a useful method and for recycling the plastic
wastages properly sorting of the plastic components from biodegradable materials and thus it
can be stated that the process of soring is very crucial for conducting the proper recycling
methods (Zhu et al., 2019).
From the data of Australian Government, it can be stated that in the year of 2018,
almost 3.4 million tonnes of plastics were consumed by the Australian people and among
them only 320,000 tonnes of plastics were recovered. This data suggested that the rate of
plastic recycling in the country was approximately 9.4 per cent. Moreover, it was reported
that among the 320 000 tonnes of plastics collected for the reprocessing, only 145, 700 tonnes
were reprocessed within Australia and the rest of the plastic waste products were exported
outside for the reprocessing. From the survey data, it was observed that over the year, the
rate of plastic recycle rate in the country had lowered. In the year of 2015-16, the rate of
plastic waste recovery was almost 11.3 per cent. In the year 2016-17, the rate was reduced to
9.8 per cent and then in 2017-18, the condition became worse than the previous two years
(Australian Government, 2018).

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In case of plastic waste management, there are mainly three possible ways such as
landfill, incineration and recycling and in the case of plastic waste, mainly the recycling
methods and landfill technique are used. Although it is always beneficial to reuse the plastic
materials, it can still be stated that the process of the landfill is the primary plastic waste
management strategy for Australia. In this regard, it can be stated that plastic can easily be
used as an energy source as they still have high caloric value and in some cases, plastic can
be converted to the monomers. After forming these monomers, they are again used to form
polymers as well. In various studies, it was identified that the cases of landfilling by plastic
waste are the most common strategy for Australia due to its cost-effective nature. However,
with the advancement of technology and time, various cost-effective recycling technologies
are also used by the local government and authorities for managing plastic waste and most of
the cases, the local governments are opting for recycling process (Redmond et al., 2014). In
recent times, different types of recycling processes are used for the recycling process and this
is very important to sort the plastic properly. According to the study of Ruj et al. (2015), it is
reported that in the process of plastic waste management, the issue of plastic soring is one of
the significant issues and there are different types of methods that are used for this process.
While discussing the difficulties of the plastic soring process, it can be stated that the during
the sorting process, it is challenging to make a difference in between the shredded bottles of
PVC from shredded PET bottles and this separation procedure has to be completed before
next procedure as the existence of PVC may reduce the overall quality of whole plastic. The
process of mechanical separation technique is mainly used to differentiate the plastics from
the other materials present in the waste products. However, for distinguishing between
different types of plastics, different techniques are required. Therefore, in many cases, the
different types of plastics are sorted by using observational techniques such as observing the
colours of the plastics and this technique is mainly used to maintain the quality of the plastics

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and thereby improves the physical appearance of the products made from those recycled
plastics (Zhu et al., 2019). However, it is also quite evident that, presence of PVC up to 15
per cent in mixed plastic waste is not considered as a technical problem for the plastic
recycling process. According to the study of Chavan (2013), it is stated that after the sorting
and recycling of the plastics, those recycled plastics are mainly used in low grade works as
the original texture and structure of the polymer are distorted during the primary use of the
plastics as additives and contaminants are present in the plastic materials during the first time
use and the presence of those materials is responsible for the distortion of the original
polymer structure of the components.
In recent times, in most cases, an automatic system for sorting the plastics is used by
the waste management authorities and it is reported that the use of this automated sorting
process has become prevalent. According to the study of Rani et al. (2019), it is stated that
the automated systems are mainly based on vibrational spectroscopy methods for the
identification of polymer and camera systems for optical identification of vibrant and
coloured components. Along with this, other sorting technologies include Mass spectroscopy
or UV–Vis spectroscopy for identification of hyper-spectral imaging methods, x-ray
detection for specific containers, fluorescence spectroscopy for recognizing heavy metals and
halogens.
In this report, the application of spectroscopy in the plastic sorting method is
discussed and along with this, in the later part of the report, a few other techniques for sorting
plastics are also discussed briefly.

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Review of Literature
Importance of plastic sorting as per recycling
In the process of plastic recycling the issue of plastic sorting is very crucial and in the
process of recycling the sorting of plastic is the primary step as it is associated with the
quality of the recycled products. So, proper sorting can improve the quality of the recycled
product and thereby the life cycle of the product will also be enhanced. One of the main
reasons that are why sorting of plastic materials is essential is that in the waste products there
various other materials and many of them are not recyclable. So, it is crucial to sort the
plastics which are recyclable and send them to waste management organizations (Leal Filho
et al., 2016).
On the other hand, it is also noted that in the waste products, there are various
components that can spoil the recyclable plastics and so it is essential to remove those
materials from the recyclable components. For example, it can be stated that the presence
of batteries, appliances in the waste products can hamper the quality of the recyclable plastics
and if such materials are present in the waste products then none of the products can be
recycled properly. Not only can this, but the presence of garbage and food waste also hamper
the process of recycling of plastics in the waste management program (Wong et al., 2016). In
case of Australia, there are various waste management companies that can provide a complete
waste management solution to the local authorities and governments as well. In this context,
the name of the two companies can be mentioned as they are engaged in the process of plastic
sorting and recycling along with the overall waste management process in the country. Suez
is one of the biggest waste management companies that are involved in the process of
managing different types of waste products. The waste collection process of the Brisbane
City Council is the most extensive waste collection system in the southern hemisphere and it

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is associated with the service of Suez and thus the company is servicing almost 1.2 million
residents each week. Brisbane is the third largest city of the country and per year, the
population of the country is growing by 2 per cent and along with this, it is also stated that the
almost 8000 new houses are built in the city. So the amount of waste products is also
enhancing per year. The Brisbane City Council (BCC) takes the help of SUEZ for managing
this massive amount of waste products. This company is providing support to BCC since
2002 and it is reported that the Brisbane’s waste services needs are enormous and so SUEZ
has to provide 120,000 services per day across the different regions including several suburbs
and housing types including high density urban houses through constricted ways to
countryside properties of Brisbane. The main goal of SUEZ is to collect all the waste
products from every single bins and if a bin is missed accidentally BCC’s call centres can
immediately report to the SUEZ team for fast solution. As a part of the sorting of the waste
products, SUEZ uses vehicles with several chambers so that they can collect the waste and
recycling simultaneously and then those products are placed into the separate compartments
of the vehicle (Suez, 2020). Toxfree is another company that is engaged in this waste
management service in the country and this company also provides a complete solution to the
case of waste management and recycling in Australia.
Methods used for recycling in Australia (Brisbane)
In Brisbane, the BCC is determined to make the city cleaner and greener and for this
they have concentrated a lot on keeping the recycling process more comfortable for the
people residing in the city. As per the report of BCC, it can be stated that the in the year of
2017-18 the BCC has collected almost 90,000 tonnes of paper cardboard, plastic, metals and
other plastic components through kerbside recycling service and so it can be stated that the
process of recycling is very crucial for the city (Brisbane City Council, 2020). For the process
of recycling the BCC tries to make the process of different waste products from their sources

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that are from the households in case of household products and after that a collection truck
collects those products from the households. Again a sorting process is conducted and
workers engaged in the recycling process perform manual sorting of the recyclable plastics
and after that a mechanical sorting process is also conducted. The rubbish bin is collected
from the overall waste products, then rest of the materials are taken to the Council facility for
crushing and compacting as much as possible. The compacting process helps in the reduction
of the sizes of materials. After the sorting process, all the recyclable materials are kept
separately and they are used for the production of various products (Brisbane City Council,
2020). Another report of the Queensland government stated that recycling residuals are
material passing through recovery methods which are sent to the disposal basically the
process of landfills. However, in some cases, it is also reported that the recovery methods of
recycling may be hampered due to the contaminations, technical issues, process breakdowns
and lack of demands for the recovered materials (Queensland Government, 2018). For
example, it can be stated that contamination is a crucial problem for the local government
kerbside recycling programs. The rate of contamination by the councils for the yellow bin in
the year of 2017-18 was approximately 5 per cent to 48 per cent (average 16 per cent). In the
case of contamination rate for a smaller green bin was almost 0 to 5 per cent that is much
lower than that of the yellow bins (Queensland Government, 2018).
Issue of Landfill by Plastic Waste
The process of the landfill is one of the oldest methods for managing waste products
around the different countries of the world. For most of the municipal corporation the process
of waste management has become a severe area of threat as due to the growing population the
amount of generated waste products are also enhancing day by day and thereby the number of
plastic waste products is also increasing. From the data, it was reported that the each year,
almost 20 million tonnes of garbage makes their way to landfilling in Australia and it is