T03_P01

Monitoring of biogenic carbon fraction of disposable packaging

Aziz Gill K¹, Michczyńska D¹, Michczyński A¹

¹Silesian University of Technology (Politechnika Śląska), Gliwice, Poland

Disposable packaging materials are typically single use items and commonly used for enclosing or protecting food products during storage, sale, delivery and for the regular use mainly at restaurants. Annually more than18 million tonnes of waste can be collected in Europe by adopting the best strategies, resulting in 13% reduction in greenhouse gas emitted by packaging wastes. Europe intends to increase the recovered and recycled packaging waste which is 73 million tonnes (Tallentire and Steubing 2020). Disposable packaging prepared from sugarcane or paper can be a source of valuable resources and can overcome the plastic problem. Sugarcane plates are made from renewable sugarcane pulp so the compositing takeaway packaging minimizes the greenhouse gas emissions and improves the soil quality (APSnet). New paper production from waste paper requires less energy and emits less emissions than producing the same amount of paper from virgin materials, thus the recycling of waste paper could be beneficial to the environment (Merrild et al. 2008).

Our research aims to examine the ¹⁴C isotope concentration in disposable waste materials to make sure if indeed the materials contain some concentration of biogenic carbon to cause green effect in recycling. We examine the disposable paper plates, cups, straws, baking paper, sugar cane and wheat materials. The results of the measurements of bio carbon made by LSC and AMS techniques at Radiocarbon Laboratory in Gliwice (Pazdur et al. 2003; Piotrowska 2013) will be presented.