
UK-based material technologies company Aquapak is to support five University of Portsmouth PhD students, each funded for four years, to explore the complex problem of marine pollution from plastic packaging.
Estimates suggest that five million tonnes of plastic is used in the UK each year, nearly half of which is packaging that ends up in the environment. Plastic waste is accumulating and breaking down in our oceans at an alarming rate, with potentially catastrophic results for both marine and human health.
‘Relatively little is known about how and at what speed plastic packaging degenerates in the environment and how industry practice could help to end the damaging impact of plastics,’ said Professor Steve Fletcher, director of Revolution Plastics and the Global Plastics Policy Centre at the University of Portsmouth. ‘In order to develop meaningful solutions, it is vital to better understand the products causing the pollution, how they pollute and how their damage can be reduced. Research is key to shaping that understanding and the transformational change that will follow. Having a dedicated team of scientists is really going to help accelerate our search for solutions.’
‘We have always been mindful that, inevitably, plastic materials escape into the environment and often end up in the oceans, and although this has come to the forefront in recent times, actually there is very little understanding of exactly how these materials behave in the variety of marine environments,’ said John Williams, Aquapak’s chief technology officer. ‘Aquapak’s sponsorship of this ground-breaking interdisciplinary approach with the global experts at the University of Portsmouth will significantly increase the knowledge in this area, and aid the drive towards better design, better materials and a cleaner environment.’
The PhD group will build on the University of Portsmouth’s extensive expertise and global reputation in plastics. The students will form an interdisciplinary cluster, supervised by senior scientists at the top of their fields, working across a range of faculties and disciplines. Through collaboration, and by avoiding ‘silos’, the team of academics will be able to share knowledge and research to develop solutions for meeting the challenge of plastic-packaging pollution.
The students will work on the following projects: engineering enzymes and processes for recycling single-use plastics; development of sustainable biodegradable packaging for food or other types of packaging applications; assessing the formation of microplastic pollution by pure and composite plastic packaging products; and the role of ‘design for circularity’ in the transition to a circular plastics economy.
‘This opportunity is likely to create critical impact that spans the whole supply chain of plastic,’ Fletcher said. ‘The interdisciplinary nature of the PhD cluster means that new knowledge is not produced in isolation, but in a way that ensures all areas inform each other.’