Plastic waste and recycling sim
Drag six plastics to landfill, the sea, an incinerator, a pellet-making machine or a depolymerising reactor, and see what really happens, with the carbon dioxide and hydrogen chloride from burning worked out from balanced equations.
Polymers: disposal and recycling of plastics · covers the O-Level, IGCSE, GCSE topic
What the sim shows
Most plastics are addition polymers made from crude oil, and they are non-biodegradable: microbes cannot break them down. So plastic waste in landfill sites stays in the ground and uses up land, and plastic in the sea breaks into smaller and smaller pieces (microplastics) that harm animals. Burning plastic releases energy, but it makes carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) and, from some plastics, toxic gases: PVC gives hydrogen chloride, and too little air gives carbon monoxide and soot. Best of all is to use less plastic (reduce) and to use items again, such as refilling a bottle (reuse); recycling comes after these. Recycling is better than landfill or burning: thermoplastics can be melted and made into pellets for new products (they must be sorted by type first, using the codes 1 to 6), and some plastics can be broken down chemically. PET is a condensation polymer, so it can be hydrolysed (depolymerised) back to its monomers; addition polymers can be cracked into smaller molecules to make new plastics or fuels. Recycling saves crude oil and energy and cuts waste, but it needs collecting, sorting and cleaning. Every mass on this page is worked out from the polymer's repeat unit and a balanced equation (Aᵣ: H 1, C 12, O 16, Cl 35.5), for 10.0 g samples; burning is taken as complete, melting as having no loss, and hydrolysis as complete. No percentages are invented.
- Reactor: depolymerising (PET) or cracking (addition polymers) turns waste back into raw materials
- Six plastics, 10.0 g each, with their recycling codes 1 to 6
- Landfill, the sea, burning, melting into pellets, depolymerising or cracking
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