At the moment, higher income countries have not developed the necessary infrastructure to deal with their own waste and have preferred exporting waste than keeping up with innovations in the field of recycling that could address this exported waste. In these conditions, naturally, the policies and Regulation in place are behind the curve.
We need some radical changes to drive a truly circular economy but the onus is now on the recyclers to show the way supported by government, regulators and the whole value chain.
When end-of-life plastic waste can be converted into something of value to be used over and over again there is little logic in burying, burning or exporting it to developing countries which only creates more pollution on a planet that has carefully enough – and It actually even goes against the Waste Hierarchy established by the EU
We need to deal with our own end-of-life plastic and one of the obvious solutions is to adopt chemical recycling which produces high-quality output over and over again, enabling the creation of virgin quality recycled plastics.
An example of how this might work is PLASTIC ENERGY’S agreement with SABIC, a diversified chemicals company headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where ‘certified circular polymers’ will be produced from TACOIL.
TACOIL is formed through a Thermal Anaerobic Conversion (TAC) recycling process for low quality, mixed plastic waste otherwise destined for incineration or landfill. The process is designed to convert end-of-life plastic waste into a new feedstock to create clean recycled plastics or alternative low-carbon fuels. For every tonne of end-of-life plastic waste processed, 850 litres of the TACOIL chemical feedstock is produced.
SABIC will process the TACOIL and the “certified circular polymers” granulates will then be supplied to key customers to use in their development of pioneering, high quality and consumer-safe products. For instance, Tupperware Brands Corp. will use the "certified circular polymers" to make two products to help reduce the use of single-use plastic — including a reusable straw and coffee cup.
