The Waste Biz: Is Plastic To Oil A Step Forward For The Circular Economy?
Yesterday, I followed a fascinating Twitter chat put together by our friends at Triplepundit: Dow Chemical discussed and answered questions about its Energy Bag pilot project in Citrus Heights, California. The project involved collection of plastics that generally can’t be recycled for transformation into synthetic crude oil. The chat featured Neil Hawkins and Jeff Wooster from Dow, and sustainable business expert Andrew Winston.
So, does a plastic to oil project like this represent a step forward in circular economy practice? Is this a sustainable way to extract energy from materials that would likely end up in a landfill otherwise? Dow, along with partners the Flexible Packaging Association and Republic Services, certainly think so, and made their case during the chat, as well as in the video presentation on the pilot project:
It’s an interesting idea: why not recycle these materials into energy sources? The process for doing this is established and pretty clean itself: pyrolysis speeds up the process of decomposition with the application of heat. But as you might imagine, not everyone’s convinced that plastic to oil has a place in the circular economy. One message we saw multiple times throughout the chat:
Just to make sure we’re on the same page, pyrolysis is not the burning of plastic… but, as GAIA pointed out repeatedly during the chat, the synthetic oil produced is burned. In a sense, this is still using fossil fuels (because many plastics are made from oil or natural gas)… just after they’ve been converted to other forms. (And, disclosure: we’ve published guest posts from GAIA in the past). And, of course, all of that recycling requires energy, too.
Still, I’m not against this process: keeping plastics that can’t be recycled out of the landfill is definitely a step forward, as is the “reuse” of fossil fuels that have already been extracted and put to use. But, as we’ve noted over and over again, all waste to energy projects have to be examined critically…
I’m definitely interested in your feedback on this one: is plastic to oil conversion like this a viable long-term strategy for recycling plastics? A good short-term practice while we move away from oil and gas based plastics? Let us know what you think.
http://sustainablog.org/2015/08/the-waste-biz...r-economy/
Yesterday, I followed a fascinating Twitter chat put together by our friends at Triplepundit: Dow Chemical discussed and answered questions about its Energy Bag pilot project in Citrus Heights, California. The project involved collection of plastics that generally can’t be recycled for transformation into synthetic crude oil. The chat featured Neil Hawkins and Jeff Wooster from Dow, and sustainable business expert Andrew Winston.
So, does a plastic to oil project like this represent a step forward in circular economy practice? Is this a sustainable way to extract energy from materials that would likely end up in a landfill otherwise? Dow, along with partners the Flexible Packaging Association and Republic Services, certainly think so, and made their case during the chat, as well as in the video presentation on the pilot project:
It’s an interesting idea: why not recycle these materials into energy sources? The process for doing this is established and pretty clean itself: pyrolysis speeds up the process of decomposition with the application of heat. But as you might imagine, not everyone’s convinced that plastic to oil has a place in the circular economy. One message we saw multiple times throughout the chat:
Just to make sure we’re on the same page, pyrolysis is not the burning of plastic… but, as GAIA pointed out repeatedly during the chat, the synthetic oil produced is burned. In a sense, this is still using fossil fuels (because many plastics are made from oil or natural gas)… just after they’ve been converted to other forms. (And, disclosure: we’ve published guest posts from GAIA in the past). And, of course, all of that recycling requires energy, too.
Still, I’m not against this process: keeping plastics that can’t be recycled out of the landfill is definitely a step forward, as is the “reuse” of fossil fuels that have already been extracted and put to use. But, as we’ve noted over and over again, all waste to energy projects have to be examined critically…
I’m definitely interested in your feedback on this one: is plastic to oil conversion like this a viable long-term strategy for recycling plastics? A good short-term practice while we move away from oil and gas based plastics? Let us know what you think.
http://sustainablog.org/2015/08/the-waste-biz...r-economy/
