Open Conversation Series: Plastic: The Global Challenges of a Wonder Material

The Plastic Problem: What are we dealing with? 
Troels Skydstrup - Professor of Organic Chemistry, Aarhus University

Plastics are an integral part of modern society, offering numerous benefits across a wide range of applications. They are essential for protective coatings, lightweight packaging, food preservation, and life-saving medical devices. They also play a vital role in the manufacturing of electronic devices, vehicles, and energy technologies.

Thanks to the versatility and adaptability of polymers, global plastic production has increased dramatically since the emergence of the modern polymer industry in the 1950s. 

In 2025, global plastic production exceeded 400 million tonnes and continues to rise.

However, the widespread use of synthetic polymers also presents significant challenges, including a dependence on non-renewable fossil feedstocks and the adverse environmental and human health impacts associated with accumulating plastic waste. Less than 10% of all plastics produced are recycled, although the reported figures vary depending on how recycling is defined.

This lecture provides an overview of global plastic production and explores potential solutions for recycling some of the most challenging materials to recycle: thermoset plastics. 

It also presents approaches to developing and implementing chemical technologies to address the recycling challenges associated with these materials.

The Plastic Paradox: Why do we keep using it?
Gauri Pathak - Associate Professor at the Department of Global Studies, Aarhus University

Plastics, as the paradigmatic, ubiquitous materials of our times, simultaneously offer both the promises and the problems of modernity: even as they bring hygiene, convenience, and consumer access, they deliver environmental degradation, anthropogenic toxicity, and uncertain health risks. 

This session will center that paradox as being crucial to interventions to tackle the harms of plastics. 

Drawing from case studies from anthropological fieldwork predominantly in South and Southeast Asia, the session will explore not just the ills of plastics and the uneven toxic violence they perpetuate, but also their utility and the values they represent, even to those most subjected to their harms. 

Thus, we will consider how and why it is that people and communities find themselves dependent upon these very same materials that compromise their health and the health of the environment.

Time: 27 October 2026 at 15.15-16.45 (CET)

Place: Online and iNANO Auditorium 1593-012)

Led by:

• Giulia Romano - Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and Management, Pisa University 

  What helps citizens, businesses and public organisations turn environmental awareness into everyday practice? 

  Drawing on Italian and European case studies, this talk explores how waste prevention, reuse and recycling can work in practice. Examples include Paris’s efforts to eliminate single-use plastics, reuse centres in Sweden and Italy, and Italian initiatives to improve waste sorting and recycling. 

  Through these experiences, we will examine what makes change possible: committed leaders, motivated professionals, citizen and business engagement, adequate resources and the ability to adapt. 

  We will also discuss the obstacles these initiatives encounter and how they can be addressed. The aim is to understand how successful experiences can inspire action elsewhere, and how organisations and public policies can help make sustainable choices easier.

   

• Anders Laursen - Project Manager, REUSABLE, Aarhus Municipality

Time: 3 November 2026 at 15.15-16.15 (CET)

Place: Online and iNANO Auditorium 1593-012

Led by:

• Andreas Sommerfeldt, senior specialist, Danish Technological Institute 

  In this presentation, Andreas Sommerfeldt explores the challenges and opportunities he has encountered in his work with polymer recycling, focusing on new sustainable methods to repurpose plastic waste. 

  We will take the journey from crude oil to plastic, exploring the chemistry of polymers and additives. 

  Then we turn this process around, examining new recycling routes, mechanical, solvent-based, enzymatic, and pyrolysis, showing how each method redirects plastic waste back into the production cycle. 
   

• Daniel Otzen, professor of Protein Biophysics, Aarhus University

  Plastic is a synthetic, human-made material developed through modern chemistry. However, several types of plastics, including polyurethane, polyester, and nylon, contain chemical bonds similar to those found in biomolecules such as proteins and fats.

  Researchers are increasingly discovering enzymes produced by microorganisms, particularly bacteria, that can break down these types of plastics. Once identified, these enzymes can be further engineered to improve their efficiency and performance.

  This lecture explores how these enzymes are discovered and engineered, and how chemistry and biochemistry can work together to develop viable processes for complete plastic recycling.

Time: 11 November 2026 at 15.15-16.15 (CET)

Place: Online and Auditorium F 1534-125

Led by:

Jacob Arnbjerg, Lead Sustainable Materials Specialist, Grundfos

Plastic as an engineering material provides many desired advantages for products in industrial applications, yet proper recycling largely remains a serious obstacle for circularity. 

In this talk we will take an industrial perspective and look at the economic, technical and structural challenges and opportunities associated with recycling plastic. 

For implementation at scale, this necessarily involves a holistic approach, connecting material sourcing and product design to performance during use and end-of-use potentials. 

To succeed, different partners with different competences need to join efforts. This presents a complex challenge, but also a challenge that is critically important to overcome.

Time: 17 November 2026 at 15.15-16.15 (CET)

Place: Online and iNANO Auditorium 1593-012

Led by:

• Asger Holm Agergaard, Consultant, InFACT, Danish Technological Institute

  Flexible food plastic packaging is essential for protecting food and preventing spoilage, yet only about 14% is currently recycled across the EU due to complex multilayer structures, inks, and sorting barriers. 

  Making this stream truly circular is notoriously difficult—not because solutions don't exist on paper, but because the real-world value chain is fraught with practical friction. 

  Drawing on early experiences from the InFACT Project, this talk explores what happens when municipalities, waste sorters, recyclers, converters, and major food brands attempt to align their operations to close the loop. 

  While the ambitions are set, the hurdles are immediate: sorting plants cannot easily separate food from non-food waste, strict food-contact safety rules challenge novel recycling technologies, and brand owners must navigate the gap between their "virgin plastic wish lists" and realistic recycled material properties. 

  This presentation offers a candid look at the trade-offs, policy bottlenecks, and cross-disciplinary challenges of trying to make circular plastic systems work in practice.

•  Finn Wiedemann, Co-founder & CEO, GLYON

  The Case for Productive Naivety – Making the textile industry run on its own waste

  Much of what the textile industry discards could be raw material again, yet the industry still runs on finite resources and a linear production model. 

  The science to change that is emerging, yet the infrastructure and systems around it are where good technology tends to die. 

  Taking textile waste as the example, GLYON’s co-founder will explore what it takes to build a second stream of raw materials from what the industry is treating as waste today. Part answers, part ideas to build on, part personal story.

Panel Debate: Can We Make Plastic Circular?

Time: 24 November 2026 at 15.15-16.45 (CET)

Place: Online and iNANO Auditorium 1593-012