Advances in Recycling & Waste Management

One method to solve the problems brought on by plastic pollution is through standards. By addressing quality, safety, information, and measurement as well as information and measurement, standards can help to support the transition to a circular economy for plastic resources by minimising diversity and boosting compatibility. This project's objectives included categorising current plastic standards within a framework for the circular economy, locating potential gaps, and highlighting prospective areas for standardisation in the future. Using desktop research on current standards, 95 plastic standards were found, just 9 of which are Australian standards. Most of the standards talk about recycling and biodegradable or compostable plastics. There are several chances to develop standards for waste levels higher up the plastics hierarchy, such design and reuse.

In the wood biomass is frequently utilised as a fuel to produce heat and power, producing a sizable amount of ash in the process. In order to properly dispose of ash, especially in its finest fraction, specialised engineering solutions are needed because ash particles contain heavy metals and can readily damage land, groundwater, or air. In this work, concrete with a 15% and 30% cement replacement, respectively, was made using wood fly ash with high pozzolanic oxide content and one with a high CaO content. Due to the low stiffness of the wood ash particles, the introduction of wood ash into concrete decreased the 28-day compressive strength by up to 37%; however, the 2-year compressive strength revealed very little pozzolanic reactivity.