Local time on the early morning of the 6th, the Republican presidential candidate and former President of the United States, Donald Trump, declared victory in the 2024 presidential election. Predictably, Trump's rise to power will stir the global landscape.

In recent years, the problem of marine plastic pollution has become increasingly serious, and there is an urgent need to find effective solutions. Recently, researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Oceanography (NIOZ) have discovered that a fungus living in the ocean can degrade the plastic polyethylene (PE), bringing new hope for solving this global environmental problem. The research results were published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

With the rapid development of global production and consumption patterns, plastic products are widely used in various fields due to their light weight, durability, and low cost. However, this has also led to a large amount of waste plastic pollution. Statistics show that about one-third of the plastic produced globally each year is not effectively recycled, causing serious environmental pollution. The rational recycling and reuse of waste plastic are not only an urgent need to reduce the environmental burden but also an inevitable choice for achieving sustainable economic development. This article will discuss the importance of waste plastic recycling, the current challenges, and future innovative paths, aiming to provide a reference for building a circular economic system.

As an important issue in today's global environmental governance, plastic pollution, especially marine pollution and microplastics, has shown an uncontrollable development trend, which means that the plastic problem can no longer be ignored by the international community. As of 2022, the world produces approximately 430 million tons of plastic annually, of which over two-thirds are disposable products that quickly become waste after use (OECD, 2023). Since the mid-20th century, the plastic chemical industry has experienced explosive growth, and to date, the world has produced approximately 9.2 billion tons of plastic, of which about 7 billion tons have become waste.

On the morning of September 5, President Xi Jinping attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and delivered a keynote speech, reviewing the development of China-Africa relations, announcing the new positioning of China-Africa relations, and proposing to implement the ten major partnership actions for China and Africa to jointly promote modernization. In his keynote speech, President Xi Jinping proposed that China and Africa should jointly promote the "six modernizations", which was widely recognized by all sectors of Africa.

Indeed, our overall understanding of plastic lags behind the impact it brings, and recognizing this impact itself is also a phased process. As early as 1907, American ecologists pointed out in their research the unusual "transparent debris" in the inner lake water system, which later researchers believed to be the earliest record of plastic pollution in water bodies (Williams and Rangel Buitrago, 2022). In the early 1970s, biologists and marine ecologists began to pay attention to the positive and negative impacts of this "new material" on the environment, and attempted to figure out how this happened; By the 1990s, the scientific community had basically reached a consensus on plastic pollution, with the main research focus shifting towards how to measure the degree and scope of plastic pollution, how to track the sources of plastic pollution, and finding alternative solutions to plastic. The landmark turning point occurred in 2004, when Thompson et al. from Plymouth University in the UK published a paper in the journal Science on plastic debris in marine water bodies and sediments, first introducing the concept of "microplastics" (Thompson, 2004). The attention of academia and the public towards marine microplastics and general plastic pollution is constantly increasing; By 2012, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development required member states to achieve the goal of "significantly reducing marine litter" by 2025. This is the first time that the issue of plastic pollution has risen to the level of global sustainability and international environmental governance.

It is well known that plastic products can be recycled. However, the process of plastic recycling is not as simple as many people might think. On one hand, the difficulty of recycling varies with different types of plastics. Without precise recycling facilities and technology, many areas can only recycle plastics like mineral water bottles and boxed beverages, while the plastics used in products like yogurt cups, plastic cutlery, and coffee pods will ultimately be incinerated or landfilled due to a "lack of recycling capacity." On the other hand, the heating process shortens the polymer chains, thereby reducing the quality of the plastic. Therefore, even if a plastic water bottle can be effectively recycled, it cannot simply be "reborn" as another plastic water bottle. The vast majority of plastic products will be "downcycled," becoming products of lower quality than their original form.

Advanced recycling technologies are evolving at a rapid pace, with new players emerging in the market, ranging from start-ups to large corporations - new plants are being built, new capacities are being realised and new partnerships are being established. As a result of these developments, keeping track of all the information has become exceptionally difficult. in July 2024, nova-Institute published a report titled 'Advanced Plastic Waste Recycling Technologies and Global Capacity Distribution', which aims to sort out all the information available on this industry and provide a structured, in-depth overview and insights. The report focuses on a detailed analysis of existing advanced recycling technologies and their providers, while new technologies and updated information have been added. In addition, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of global input and output capacity is provided, covering more than 340 planned, installed and operating plants, as well as their product-specific volumes.

On September 30, 2024, KITECH held a grand celebration for its six-year anniversary at the factory, aimed at enriching employees' cultural lives and enhancing team collaboration spirit. The event, themed "Unity and Cooperation, Vibrant Flourishing," attracted enthusiastic participation from all employees.

At present, innovation in recycling technology is constantly developing to solve the global problem of plastic waste. However, there is always a problem, which is the limited availability of high-quality and recyclable raw materials. As the chemical industry attempts to deal with plastic waste, pollution has become a concern, such as materials with coatings or films, or materials that have been painted, printed, or colored. Due to the inability of traditional recycling techniques to handle highly polluted raw materials, most of these materials are discarded into landfills or incinerated.

On 28th June 2024, the European Commission officially published the Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which will come into force on 18th July 2024 and will replace the existing Eco-design Directive (2009/125/EC). ESPR will replace the existing Eco-design Directive (2009/125/EC) and become an important tool to promote the EU's circular economy, aiming to make sustainable products the norm in the market. By 2027, the requirements of the regulation will be mandatory for products sold in the EU, including goods produced outside the EU.

As one of the top ten countries in the world that produce and consume plastic products, China's aquatic ecosystem is severely affected by microplastics. Currently, microplastics are widely detected in oceans, freshwater, and wastewater treatment plants. Among them, the main types of microplastics include polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET).marine environment.