From Circularity to Spirality: An Integrated, Systems-Level Approach to Address the Plastics Problem
Patritsia Maria Stathatou, Christos E. Athanasiou, Matthew J. Realff
Abstract
Plastics offer significant benefits but pose growing environmental and health concerns due to low recycling rates and continued reliance on fossil-derived feedstocks. While plastics circularity has emerged as a key strategy to reduce plastic waste and impacts, current mechanical recycling pathways face major limitations in maintaining material quality over repeated cycles. Advanced methods like chemical recycling and dissolution show promise but raise questions about environmental impacts, scalability, and cost. In this perspective, we introduce the concept of spirality as a more realistic model than perfect circularity, acknowledging the inevitable degradation of plastic quality over consecutive recycling cycles and the need for tiered recycling strategies. We emphasize the importance of early stage integration of mechanical property benchmarking, life cycle assessment (LCA), and techno-economic analysis (TEA) to evaluate emerging chemistry-enabled solutions for plastics recycling. In parallel, we underscore the critical role of high-quality data, and the need for multidisciplinary collaboration to align chemistry, materials science, engineering, systems analyses, and policy for sustainable transitions. Spirality, combined with robust assessment frameworks, can guide innovation toward more pragmatic and sustainable solutions in polymer design and end-of-life management.