How to recycle the unrecyclable

The global plastic problem is getting even bigger, but there might be a solution to battle it that has been around for decades: chemical recycling. But do technological improvements make it recycle the unrecyclable? Is this the silver bullet we've all been looking for?

Reporter: Kai Steinecke
Camera: Henning Goll
Video editor: David Jacobi
Supervising editors: Joanna Gottschalk & Kiyo Dörrer

We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our channel explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

#PlanetA #ChemicalRecycling #Pyrolysis

Read more:

Types and techniques of chemical recycling:

Plastic recycling in Europe (industry numbers):

Technological assessment of chemical recycling:

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:38 First steps
01:48 Process explained
04:05 Environmental concerns
07:03 Application
08:51 Conclusion

[SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

Our first goal obviously needs to be to reduce plastic usage, but as someone with a degree in plastics engineering I still think this is important.

This video covered most of the stuff but I’d like to add a few reasons:

- Degradation. When plastic is mechanically recycled the polymer chains are shortened which leads to mechanical properties being reduced. As a result, companies really want to limit how much mechanically recycled plastic they use otherwise customers might not like the quality.

- Profitability. As the polymer chains are shortened and the properties are reduced, the processing takes a hit. This means that companies have to employ more engineers in order to constantly dial the processes back in and an engineer costs a lot more than a normal shop floor employee.

We gotta get rid of single use plastics immediately, but there’s some plastic uses which simply will never go away. For those, we need chemical recycling.

[giovannipelissero]

Chemist here. Recycling plastics is extremely tedious. There are so many different types and the same plastic might have a huge variety of additives in it. They are chemical resistant, and the starting material is really cheap.
Props to these guys, they are doing a great job!

[bebefoglia]

May I point out a few issues?
1) Pyrolysis is just one of the techniques in development for the chemical recycling, it's not the only. It's the best solution right know and in the meantime we can use it.
2) With the pyrolysis oil we can get rid of fossils switching entirely on the bio-based plastic + pyro oil (not talking about bio-degradable, but bio-based that's different).
3) We are talking about 50% of the recycled plastic that goes to landfill or incineration: I personally don't care if right know pyrolysis it's not the best solution as long as it works. Then when other technologies come to fruition we can toss pyrolysis. It's absurd saying "we don't use it because it's not good", even if it's better than incineration.
4) It's actually good that using pyro oil the plastic it's going to cost more, because right know we use plastic even if it's not the best solution for our purpose only because it's cheap. Thus the plastic will be used wisely and it will be reduced.

[kevinbarnes]

This channel always opens my eyes larger. Thank you for this video.

[Picci]

As an engineer operating in the recycling business since 1994, I have many issues on "chemical recycling" of tyres. Better to mix tyre granulate with tar and pave roads, or mix it with concrete to obtain insulating bricks... better to focus on reuse than on energy-intense elimination.

[schoobydooby]

This is well made journalism. Most channels end where you dug deeper and consulted experts in the field.

[treyshawnee]

As an environmental chemist, wish i had this channel created while i was in university. Its as educative as it is entertaining.

[fabriziodigregorio]

Very well explained. It clarifies pretty well that the quality of the feedstock is the key to the success of whatever chemical recycling process/technology. It works for tyres because tyres are tyres (homogeneous feedstock) while household plastic waste is the most heterogeneous waste stream. Well done!

[ItamiBukoto]

It's a simple thing, but thank you for the reminders to turn on subtitles. German and English share a lot of sounds, so whenever the transition happens, my first assumption is that my brain has finally decided to fail me. And then I get a sigh of relief when I see the subtitle reminder.

[DWPlanetA]

Do you think we should be using more chemical recycling?

[pedromasetti]

This was one of the best materials I saw about chemical recycling on the internet. It's clear, concise and the didactic is perfect. Actually, it's so amazing that I used it as a quote in one of my college articles about recycling. Thanks a lot for making such good content!

[earlh]

The main issue with plastic recycling in my opinion is that producing plastic from fossil fuel is much cheaper than processing old plastic.
Perhaps a tax should be added to plastic depending on the percentage of recycled plastic it contains.

[VG-ornu]

I’ve always thought about this concept, intriguing that people are feasibly looking into it

[neelroy]

3:38 : Self-sufficient doesn't mean circular. I think entropy will take very strong objection on that point.

[robbebrecx]

I'm a chemist and i must say that reeking a bottle with organic chemicals takes away any believability that you're report has. It's reckless, we can recycle almost any chemical but as always it is about the price that's the reason we don't do it.

[DaveSeymoure]

As someone who has been in the recycling industry for over 30 years, I can say there is another way to utilize the PCR MIXED plastics.. My suggestion is that companies stop making pallets with wood, new or used, and use the PCR Mixed plastic waste that otherwise goes into the landfills today. I have done so and have examples for proof. The pallets are almost unbreakable, can be infinitely recycled, and while the PCR is not going away, we have created products (many more potential products than just pallets) that can and will be very price competitive. I am new to this type of communication, but I am sure that UTUBE has a way you can reach me. OH, and yes, we do need to reduce the usage of plastic materials but this is a GREAT way until a better solution is found.

[DMahalko]

A normal private "burn pit" / "burn barrel" fire is fine for wood and paper waste, but is too cold to safely burn plastics. A backyard fire cannot break benzene rings (a primary component of styrene / styrofoam) so these toxic molecules are freed from burning away everything else, and will vaporize into the sky or stay in the ash unbroken, and then wash away with rain and poisons the environment. This is why burning of plastic waste in a backyard is hazardous. The combustion temperature needs to be extremely high to break tough chemical bonds used in plastics.

A large scale municipal incinerator needs to have supplemental oil, gas, or electric heating to push the temperature high enough to actually decompose benzene. But then this also causes normally nonreactive nitrogen gas in the supply air to also decompose, and when the combusted gases cool the loose nitrogen atoms reform into smog producing nitrogen oxides. So now you also need catalytic reduction of the waste gas to remove the smog oxides that were accidentally created.


So proper clean incineration of plastics for heating or electricity production has its own high costs, beyond simply being able to burn fossil fuels to do the same thing.

[moirai]

oh my god ive been thinking about radioactive waste recycling for years now. damn i really love this channel

[francescamolinari]

Super good video, thank you! I've been struggling to get my head around chemical recycling for quite a while. Your video really helped me to get a good overview of what it is and what it is used for.

[maudiusorelius]

As others have pointed out, pyrolysis is only one method of chemical recycling, albeit the best currently. It would have been neat to see a small section at the end looking forward. Particularly, I believe, is enzymatic digestion of plastics. Just google it and do your own research, but enzymes have been discovered to break down specifically targeted plastics (polymers) into their base building blocks (monomers). These can be used to recreate virgin plastics. The best part is that because the enzymes are targeted, sorting is not required of the waste. You can subject anything to PETase and it should only degrade PET. Then move on to next enzyme bath. It is definitely not happening yet, we have only discovered these enzymes in the last decade, most in the last few years, and we still do not have enzymes for most plastics (there are so many). But it is a beacon of possibility for a difficult problem.

Anyway, great video