Plastic packaging is designed around appearance, convenience and function, but what happens after disposal is often considered separately—yet managing this waste is key to building a circular economy, since good recycling requires sorting plastics correctly by type. Transparent polyethylene terephthalate and polystyrene, for example, can be difficult to distinguish visually, making accurate separation challenging.

A digital scheduling framework combining machine learning, optimization and blockchain technology could reduce carbon emissions at a lower cost in regional energy systems, according to research in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution. The system cut the marginal emission-reduction cost—the additional expense of removing one more ton of carbon—by about 12% when the carbon quota was restricted to half the system's baseline emissions.