Plastics & Circular Economy

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

The idea to organize a polymer-day at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, comes across the need to honor the memory of Giulio Natta, Piero Pino and Paolo Corradini for the groundbreaking nature of their contribution to Polymer Science. Starting from the invaluable discovery of Ziegler-Natta catalysts and the fundamental intuitions in polymer physics, crystallography and polymerization catalysis, they have inspired in the following 70 years from the discovery paramount innovation involving disciplines spread across industry and academia, which have converged almost immediately to mass production of plastics, while completely revolutionising consumerism in the contemporary and successive generations.
Synthetic polymers are, indeed, extremely versatile materials, with properties encompassing high corrosion resistance, tailored mechanical strength, light weight duty coupled with transparency, low toxicity and high durability. They are used by almost every industry world-wide, including food packaging, medical-tools, space exploration and many others..
The massive production and consumption of plastics today while offering several benefits, represents also one of the greatest environmental problems in the world. Marine litter and microplastics are a source of particular concern nowadays.
This event joining scientists from Accademia and Industry is aimed to highlight the huge progress achieved in Polymer Science, on one hand, and on the other hand to draw attention to the environmental problems generated by misconceptions related to plastic usage, poor end-of-life waste management, incorrect waste disposal rules, insufficient information related to their effective toxicity, degradation chemistry and physics.
The workshop will be also a follow-on meeting of the launch event of the expert group report of EASAC (European Academies Science Advisory Council) on Plastics & Circular Economy, which will be held in Brussels on January 2020.

Programma