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from the save-the-plant-collect-the-whole-set dept.
Have you ever wondered what happens when you put plastic in the recycling bin for collection? It probably goes straight into the garbage tip with the rest of the trash. Up to a short time ago, countries like China offered a decent price for usable plastic, but those deals have dried up, leaving many countries with millions of tonnes of plastic and few solutions to deal with it.
Now, Australian company Licella says it has created a system that can recycle all types of plastic, even to the extent of creating oil that can be turned into bitumen, petrol or back into different kinds of plastics.
His Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor (Cat-HTR) does just that through a form of chemical recycling that changes the plastics at a molecular level using hot water at a high pressure to turn them back into oil.
[...] Dr Humphreys said the Cat-HTR technology he and his co-founder patented was different from existing plastic-to-oil technologies like pyrolysis, which is a process that involves heating materials at a very high temperature.
Unlike traditional physical recycling, it does not require plastics to be separated according to type and colour, and can recycle anything from milk cartons to wetsuits and even wood by-products.
It also means plastic products can be recycled again and again.
But he said the bigger problem to address is our over-consumption of plastic.
The process of turning rubbish into fuel may sound familiar to sci-fi fans. In the film Back to the Future the time machine car uses garbage as fuel.
The industry has been widely described as in crisis, with a[n Australian] Senate report last year stating that "enormous quantities of recycled material, particularly materials collected through kerbside recycling, are now being stockpiled at great risk to the health and safety of local communities. Moreover, quantities of otherwise recyclable material are being sent to landfill".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:19PM (6 children)
What might tip the balance is not the costs, but the environmental impact. We're finding plastics at the remotest parts of the oceans and EVERYWHERE we look. Right now the message is "don't worry, there is no evidence to suggest that the microplastics we ingest cause any harm." It is not too big of a step to cross a line whereby there is enough political momentum to address that, like what happened to a number of other things such as CFCs or leaded gasoline.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:43PM (4 children)
That very much depends on the size of the government involved. My county, for example, does not even operate a landfill; their official position is that if residents want trash dealt with then they can contract with private disposal companies. There are no recycling services offered either publicly or privately in my county.
I can imagine some richer nations deciding to be global good-Samaritans and acting unilaterally; that gets us back to the model proposed by another AC post.... [soylentnews.org]
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:48PM
Cynicism in that AC post aside, I do think it has been an overwhelming positive for almost all the participants on this planet that leaded gasoline and CFCs were removed. But I do think it will take that level of effort to address the plastics problem, and I'm not so sure the political will exists at this point to address it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @07:52AM (2 children)
Where do you live? I'm genuinely curious what nation doesn't have /any/ recycling programme, given that elsewhere, recycling aluminum and metal, pulp and paper, and rags, are all economically profitable. Small island nation? Is there industry? Are there pollution laws? What happens to the waste that humans make?
Middens and other trash piles go back millennia, are treasure troves for historians, but only recently have some cultures began creating refuse at ridiculous rates. Does everyone there use a private disposal company? Are backyard middens a thing? If so, what happens to non-biodegradeables?
(Score: 3, Informative) by ewk on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:53AM (1 child)
Perhaps a matter of: county country/nation
If so, the waste is most likely shipped out of the county to another county.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday November 21 2019, @01:01PM
You are correct, I'm not referring to my nation, but the region around my city. The contractors pay to dump my neighborhood's waste in landfills operated by other nearby regions.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:35AM
It goes to magic-land, where the plastic is turned into rainbows and unicorns. It's also used to grow steaks and prime rib, so no cute moo-cows ever get harmed.
It's scary for how many people things work like this.