Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy

Plastic waste generation has become an important problem that critically affects marine and oceans environments. Fishing nets gear usually have a relatively short lifespan, and are abandoned, discarded and lost, what makes them one of the largest generators of ocean plastic waste. Recycled polyolefi...

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Autores principales: Juan, Rafael, Domínguez, Carlos, Robledo, Nuria, Paredes, Beatriz, Galera, Sara, García-Muñoz, Rafael A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8470735/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34578056
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym13183155
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author Juan, Rafael
Domínguez, Carlos
Robledo, Nuria
Paredes, Beatriz
Galera, Sara
García-Muñoz, Rafael A.
author_facet Juan, Rafael
Domínguez, Carlos
Robledo, Nuria
Paredes, Beatriz
Galera, Sara
García-Muñoz, Rafael A.
author_sort Juan, Rafael
collection PubMed
description Plastic waste generation has become an important problem that critically affects marine and oceans environments. Fishing nets gear usually have a relatively short lifespan, and are abandoned, discarded and lost, what makes them one of the largest generators of ocean plastic waste. Recycled polyolefin resins from fishing nets (rFN), especially from polyethylene (PE), have poor properties due to the presence of contaminants and/or excessive degradation after its lifetime. These reasons limit the use of these recycled resins. This work aims to study the incorporation of recycled fishing nets PE-made to different grades of virgin PE, in order to evaluate the potential use of these rFN in the development of new products. The recovered fishing nets have been fully characterized to evaluate its properties after the collection and recycling process. Then, different PE virgin resins have been mechanically blended with the recovered fishing nets at different recycling contents to study its feasibility for fishing nets or packaging applications. Critical mechanical properties for these applications, as the elongation at break, impact strength or environmental stress cracking resistance have been deeply evaluated. Results show important limitations for the manufacture of fibers from recycled PE fishing nets due to the presence of inorganic particles from the marine environment, which restricts the use of rFN for its original application. However, it is proved that a proper selection of PE raw resins, to be used in the blending process, allows other possible applications, such as non-food contact bottles, which open up new ways for using the fishing nets recyclates, in line with the objectives pursued by the Circular Economy of Plastics.
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spelling pubmed-84707352021-09-27 Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy Juan, Rafael Domínguez, Carlos Robledo, Nuria Paredes, Beatriz Galera, Sara García-Muñoz, Rafael A. Polymers (Basel) Article Plastic waste generation has become an important problem that critically affects marine and oceans environments. Fishing nets gear usually have a relatively short lifespan, and are abandoned, discarded and lost, what makes them one of the largest generators of ocean plastic waste. Recycled polyolefin resins from fishing nets (rFN), especially from polyethylene (PE), have poor properties due to the presence of contaminants and/or excessive degradation after its lifetime. These reasons limit the use of these recycled resins. This work aims to study the incorporation of recycled fishing nets PE-made to different grades of virgin PE, in order to evaluate the potential use of these rFN in the development of new products. The recovered fishing nets have been fully characterized to evaluate its properties after the collection and recycling process. Then, different PE virgin resins have been mechanically blended with the recovered fishing nets at different recycling contents to study its feasibility for fishing nets or packaging applications. Critical mechanical properties for these applications, as the elongation at break, impact strength or environmental stress cracking resistance have been deeply evaluated. Results show important limitations for the manufacture of fibers from recycled PE fishing nets due to the presence of inorganic particles from the marine environment, which restricts the use of rFN for its original application. However, it is proved that a proper selection of PE raw resins, to be used in the blending process, allows other possible applications, such as non-food contact bottles, which open up new ways for using the fishing nets recyclates, in line with the objectives pursued by the Circular Economy of Plastics. MDPI 2021-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8470735/ /pubmed/34578056 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym13183155 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Juan, Rafael
Domínguez, Carlos
Robledo, Nuria
Paredes, Beatriz
Galera, Sara
García-Muñoz, Rafael A.
Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy
title Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy
title_full Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy
title_fullStr Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy
title_full_unstemmed Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy
title_short Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy
title_sort challenges and opportunities for recycled polyethylene fishing nets: towards a circular economy
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8470735/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34578056
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym13183155
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