Wasting a massive opportunity: Can we turn our sea of plastic into rivers of black gold?
As a context to this article, I wanted to share my background in recycling. Before my 5+ years in automotive retailing, before my 6+ years in banking and treasury I spent nearly a decade, in fact every weekend and school holiday in metal recycling with Sims Metal and my family recycling business.
I am actually a 4th generation of scrap metal recycler and have great memories of canvassing the streets of Melbourne with my grand father, searching for salvage, or as we called it going on "the ratty".
So it piqued my interest when China announced that from January 2018 it would no longer import certain waste products from regions such as the UK, EU, USA, Japan and Australia.
For years, these countries have sent waste products like plastic, textiles and mixed paper overseas but recent changes to ban 24 categories of recyclables and solid waste will cut down the amount of material accepted by China.
China’s policy dubbed the "National Sword” or "Green Sword" is aimed at tackling its pollution problem by greatly reducing the amount of contaminated recycled materials it would accept from January 24.
China’s stated reason for halting imports was that the level of food waste and other contamination in recycled goods has risen in recent years with up to 20% of recyclable material from the US being contaminated with food or liquid. A number that has doubled in the last five years as cities aggressively ramped up their recycling push.
Turning waste into higher costs
The ban on recycled items, which can fetch $100-$500 per tonne on the global market has forced municipalities to increase charges on homeowners to collect recycling to make up for the lost revenue.
The ban on foreign waste will see ratepayers of at least one Melbourne council slugged up to $100 extra a year, while South Australia’s recycling sector is set to lose up to $8.8 million per year with most of this to be recouped from ratepayers.
So what can be done?
Lifecycle responsibility
Measures to reduce waste should be aimed at changing behaviors, imposing costs on producers of waste and providing choice. Makers of disposable packaging who impose a cost on the environment through their products expect others to pay for their disposal. These disposal costs must now be factored in to the price of their products.
If cost increases result in products that are no longer individually wrapped, put inside a box, shrink-wrapped into bundles or marketed in a blister pack – then maybe its a good thing.
Container deposit schemes such as those in South Australia and more recently NSW should become universal. Queensland and Western Australia have schemes starting in coming months but Victoria and Tasmania have so far been reluctant to move.
Bottles of black gold
While some of our waste, like paper or organic matter, can be composted and glass and metal can be recycled endlessly, there is no immediate solution for plastic waste except landfill.
Most grades of plastic can only be recycled once or twice while for certain rigid plastics its up to a maximum of 9 times.
So then what?
One potential approach is “plastic to energy”, which unlocks the chemical energy stored in waste plastic and uses it to create fuel.
Because plastic is made from refined crude oil, the most sustainable option may be to reduce crude-oil consumption by recycling the plastic and recovering as much of the raw material as possible.
This can be achieved through two different processes: gasification and pyrolysis.
Gasification involves heating the waste plastic with air or steam to produce a valuable industrial gas mixture called syngas which can produce diesel and petrol, or burned directly in boilers to generate electricity.
In pyrolysis, plastic waste is heated in the absence of oxygen, which produces a mixture of oil similar to crude oil which can be refined into transportation fuels.
Could Australia turn a mountain of plastic waste into a river of black gold, go from garbage to resource and spur a billion dollar green industry in the process?
Do you have better ideas for what can be done with the growing mountain of plastic rubbish? Leave a comment and let me know...
Image: Bas Emmen @mediavormgever
