Waste Plastic and Pharmaceuticals, Could an Integrated Solution Help?

摘要

Plastic waste and pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) are two environmental contaminates that engender considerable concern and represent as great a risk as any other priority pollutant. To reduce the impact of plastics on the environment, we need to design and facilitate the means of recycling more, produce more benign plastics that do not leach toxins, produce plastics that incinerate benignly or are biodegradable, and design plastics that can have greater functionality at the end-of-life-cycle stage. Similarly for PPCPs, we need to be selective about the ones in use with a preference for ones that are more easily degraded in the environment or are more easily retained prior to entry into the environment. In my view, new approaches to these problems need to be sought and an integrated approach represents an alternative contribution to limiting the environmental impact of waste plastic and PPCPs.