ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Invites Contributions to a Virtual Special Issue on The Circular Economy of Plastics

RecommendationsP lastics are used in health care, consumer products, clothing, transportation, agriculture, food processing, electronic materials, and construction.Yet, these products that provide essential services for modern economies often consume nonrenewable resources and have environmental impacts that range from emissions of greenhouse gases to accumulation of end-of-life wastes in oceans.Most projections forecast a growing global use for plastics, and global trade in end-of-life plastic materials is becoming more complex.Many in the sustainable chemistry and engineering research community are working toward understanding the environmental impacts of plastics and developing innovative solutions to these problems, including the development of circular processing of plastics.This editorial highlights some of the major research issues associated with plastics and the circular economy, focusing on areas where ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (ACS SCE) particularly welcomes manuscripts on these subjects, both as regular submissions and as contributions to a virtual special issue on The Circular Economy of Plastics planned for late 2021.An important step in improving the circularity of plastic material flows is to map the features of our current systems.A conceptual mapping for circular material flows of plastics is shown in Figure 1.Global production of plastics is currently 400 million tons per year and has roughly doubled since the beginning of this century.