From 2% To 90%: New Tech Recycles Way More Plastic Waste, Makes High-Quality Oil
Screenshot via Honeywell
The recycling symbol is a familiar sight to many, its triangular shape encouraging us all to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Taking it a step further is inflating the shape, so it loses its edges, promoting a circular system. This is more suitable for today’s world, where many have realized the criticality of sustainability.
Honeywell International, a chemicals and aircraft parts manufacturer, has just announced that it has derived a new solution to turn low-grade plastic waste, like single-use plastic bags and bottles, into high-quality oil suitable for refinery.
Currently, recycling technology is extremely limited: According to Bloomberg, merely 2% of plastic waste gets processed into reusable materials. As for the remaining bulk, approximately half goes to landfill or incineration facilities—and 30% getting disposed in rivers, seas and oceans.
The stuff that does manage to get recycled often ends up as lower-quality plastic because mechanical recycling heats the product, which changes its molecular bonds. In this process, returning it to a high-quality product, such as food-safe packaging, isn’t all that feasible.
This is where chemical recycling aims to come in, which can not only enhance the current process but even expand it to plastic waste otherwise unsuitable for mechanical recycling. The material gets broken down into a recycled polymer feedstock (RPF), which can be made back into high-quality plastics.
This means that recycled plastic can still be used in high-performance products, like food packaging, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, according to Carrie Eppelheimer of Honeywell Sustainable Technology Solutions.
“With chemical recycling complementing other methods of recycling, you can increase the amount of plastic that actually gets recycled by about three times over current levels,” Eppelheimer shares in a statement.
Screenshot via Honeywell
Honeywell indicates in its press release that the process will have the potential to “increase the amount of global plastic waste that can be recycled to 90%.”
To completely eradicate plastics from our societies all at once may not be a viable solution to the dire problem that excess waste poses, but this new method of recycling will at least help to mitigate some of the worst effects plastic has on the Earth.
Besides simply recycling the material itself, Honeywell has also stated that the carbon footprint of plastic waste handling will be reduced by more than half, relative to conventional incineration or landfill. This will help to lower the global warming footprint of the entire process.
The company will be working with Spanish infrastructure company Sacyr SA to scale up the new Upcycle Process Technology. Its dedicated facility, capable of turning 30,000 metric tons of mixed plastic waste into oil annually, will begin operations in 2023.
What if we could use plastic infinitely? Here's the new technology making it possible: https://t.co/hWKLuyO21m
— Honeywell (@honeywell) November 2, 2021
[via Futurism, all images via Honeywell]
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