BEYOND
RECYCLING
Paul Emmitt on why clean energy from thermal chemical recycling is a technology worth embracing
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With two of the most pressing challenges facing society today, namely those of reducing the tsunami of plastic waste polluting the planet and the need to decarbonize, there is a growing need to eliminate those plastics which are non-recyclable from the environment whilst at the same time minimizing
CO 2 emissions that result from this.
Currently such plastic and other hard to abate non-recyclable waste ends up being sent to landfill, incinerated, or exported. Landfill is becoming increasingly unavailable, expensive, and environmentally problematic. Exporting waste simply passes the problem somewhere else and is quite rightly coming under scrutiny. Incineration also presents problems with significant CO 2 emissions if not CCS equipped as well as producing a waste that can contain heavy metals and dioxins.
Traditional recycling is also problematic, with much of our plastic being either uneconomical to recycle or‘ contaminated.’ Most recyclable plastic can only be recycled once or twice and is currently more expensive than virgin material.
Consequently, there is an immediate need for alternatives to all the above, aptly highlighted by the fact that in the UK alone 76 percent of total plastic waste is not recycled, and 55 percent of waste is non-recyclable.
A clean and effective solution
An attractive and emerging solution to these issues is the advanced thermal chemical recycling of waste by pyrolysis or gasification to produce clean energy in the form of syngas( synthetic gas similar to natural gas) and hydrogen.
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