Chemical recycling: the end of plastic waste? | Rethink Sustainability

The world is choking on plastic waste. Less than nine percent of it is recycled, but an emerging industry promises to change all that. The FT’s Charlotte Middlehurst discovers how chemical recycling - separating complex waste back into its original components, to be used over and over again - could create a so-called “circular economy” for plastic.

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[RandyLy]

Hey, environmental engineer here. I just want to throw in my two cents.
Even though I am all for recycling, I want to point out that this concept could be a double-edged sword. Remember that recycling reuses that old material and converts it into new, usable material. The fuel for this process is the old plastics and plastic companies may see this is as a way to continue their plastic production. Overall, this is a viable way to have plastic waste be something useful, but remember we want to eliminate relying on plastics altogether. I think this is a good short, term solution to a long-term problem, but we still have to address the bigger problem in the future.

[noneofyourbizness]

0:31 why the elbow tap when all of them have gloves on?

[goldhen]

Can you make a story about CATACK-H, a Korean recycler of carbon and glass fiber materials? They use an eco-friendly, zero-waste chemical process to separate the fibers from their polymer matrix. They have the only sustainable solution to recycling of wind blades, hydrogen tanks, and many other applications which otherwise get landfilled or incinerated.

[annesuekocoyle]

Need to know how much energy is consumed during recycling process. The key to making these sustainable.

[benjaminlocke]

Great story, this journalist is excellent!

[willm]

Very interested to know the composition of the gases being emitted into the atmosphere from these processes???

[jamessilvester]

Been happening in India for a very long time. But we need a better solution to solve the plastic problems. They is also a new technology that desolves the plastic with microbes, seems cleaner than burning it.

[monikabelperio]

It was called Thermal de-polymerisation more than a decade ago.

[fiddlestickzmuzik]

We have to go to the start of the manufacturing process and make things from the start that are ready to be chemically recycled, so many plastics now are just made to use once and never again, this HAS TO STOP, everything made should be made in a such a way that it allows chemical recycling before it's ever used even once.

[JJs_playground]

Great news, we need more and more of these innovations.

[joernh]

„Delivered from Europe“? Does the UK not even consider itself as a geographical part of Europe any more?

[Pyrochemik]

There is a downside to this process. The input material is of instable quality. Not only waste canbe dirty, but also it consist of different plastic materials. And each of them has different additives, colorants, softeners. These transform into tiny dust particles, which are not filterable. Product contaminated with these can never be allowed into oil refinery, because it would destroy catalytic systems. Same goes for chlorine containing plastics - PVC. So the thing you can do with the product, is to burn it. And due to dust particles, it sucks as fuel, it will damage car´s catalyst, and wear down engine parts mechanicaly.

[yayo]

Glass can be reused again and again. Coca cola has been doing this. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

[bigatom]

It was great to feature in the chemical recycling Rethink Sustainability piece!

[re-unbox]

Sounds promising. Like to see a revisit of this in 1 or 2 years time.

[dwsantx]

Glad to see this finally come about. Thanks

[zoekenny]

I think it's a good idea to try to chemically recycle the plastic waste that already exists, because otherwise it will just be sitting there for hundreds of years. But our whole consumption model really needs to shift away from single-use plastics to really solve the problem. Production of plant-based plastics which at least break down after a period of time also needs to be ramped up.

[garyradtke]

Several things. 1. Why does she wear a mask while driving up the road but no mask when congregating several other people. 2. wondered why breaking down plastics wasn't done for years. Styrofoam for instance melts away with many other chemicals. 3. Glass always appeared to me to be the best container other than the fact it breaks easily. Back in the day pop bottles, milk bottles, beer bottles and much more had return bounties on them for recycling. As kids we walked the ditches for pop bottles to return for cash to buy things. We had no allowance and this is how we earned cash. $1.00 would buy a burger, fries and a coke. Pop bottle bounty was a nickle so it usually wasn't very tough to find 20 bottles each. At least in the countryside ditches it wasn't.

[IronHandTech]

This is a great way to reduce plastic waste. But I wonder, is the cost of building this factory high? Is it an effective industry from an economic perspective?

[flooby]

Very interesting, but there is a missing point here, the yields of pyrolysis and the share of output that goes into chemical production (including plastics), recycling, and fuels production, recovery operation. How can you ensure that we are speaking of chemical recycling and not plastic to fuel?