Plastic Waste: Facts and a Solution based on IOTA

This article shows important facts about plastic waste. The current handling of this problem is discussed. Finally, a possible solution of a part of this problem with Deposy, the deposit system, is described.

Facts about plastic waste

Between 1950 and 2017 a total of 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic were produced. That is more than one tonne for each person now living on Earth. The biggest share consists of single-use products and packaging. Less than ten percent of all plastic ever produced has been recycled.

In 2015, 407 million tonnes of plastics were produced worldwide.

In 2018, over 1.13 trillion items of packaging — most of them plastic — were used for food and drinks in the EU alone.

Plastic fuels climate change. If current trends continue, plastics will have caused around 56 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions by 2050. In other words: making plastic could cost 10 to13 percent of the remaining carbon budget to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The innovative deposit system Deposy could be a solution for a part of this plastic waste issue. A very large number of plastic products could equipped with a QR code and collected in an innovative deposit system based on IOTA. Assuming a weight of 50 g per package, this is about 20,000 packages per tonne of plastic. If Deposy prevails, many trillion plastic products can be equipped with a QR code that contains both data and IOTA as a payment.

Waste Incineration

Most of the plastic waste is not sorted in the first place, but ends up directly in the waste incineration plants. Because there is untiring competition for plastic between the disposers and recyclers. This waste is delivered to where it makes the most money. And today it is usually cheaper to incinerate the waste than to recycle it. This is because recycling is more expensive.