Page - 282 - in Freshwater Microplastics - Emerging Environmental Contaminants?

implementation of this circular economicmodel is to modify the value chain of plastics throughout all phasesof its functional life.Anumberof economicalterna- tives are already being implemented aswill be described below. Thismodel also puts emphasis on preventivemeasures when accounting for environmental prob- lemscausedbyexcessive leakage.Prevention isalsomuchmorecost-effectiveand environmentally friendly than postconsumer cleanup schemes,manyofwhich are economically or technologically unfeasible. Most stakeholders agreewastemanagementmust improve globally to prevent pollution of the aquatic environment, and that landfilling waste is not a viable strategy in the future.What somehave called “uncontrolledbiochemical reactors” [76] are landfillswhich are increasingly losing popularity as the costs andhazards outweigh the benefits. In “Zero Plastics to Landfill by 2020” [77], the European Union, and the trade organizations Plastics Europe and the American Chemistry Council [78], advocates ending landfill reliance. Where the circular and linear economies largely differ is the role of policy to drive design, and the end-of-life plan for recoveredplastic. ZeroWastevs.Waste-to-Energy Thisdivisioncouldbeconsidered the frontline wheresharpdivisionsexist.Whetherplasticsare incineratedforenergyrecoveryor sortedfor recyclingandremanufacture reflectsstakeholderpositionsandinfluences Fig. 1 Linear economymodel for plastic products and packaging and system leaks. Product is manufactured using principally new resources, largely petroleum based. Most of the product’s value is lost during its life cycle because of leakage along the entire value chain (red arrows), including pellet loss, littering, combined sewage overflow, loss during transport and improper storageofwaste, andpoorlydesignedproducts that areeasily lost to theenvironmentanddifficult to recover (microbeads, smallwrappers, torncornersofpackaging).This leads toacontamination of the environment, affecting wildlife and human well-being. A small proportion is recycled (greenarrow) for remanufacture,with the remainder utilized for energy recovery 282 M.Eriksen et al.