{"id":80604,"date":"2020-06-17T07:22:19","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T05:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=80604"},"modified":"2021-09-09T19:22:34","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T17:22:34","slug":"anti-plastics-group-calls-chemical-recycling-dead-end-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/anti-plastics-group-calls-chemical-recycling-dead-end-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Plastics Group Calls Chemical Recycling ‘Dead-End’ Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

A \u201ctechnical study<\/a>\u201d from the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives is further proof that the greens will not support solutions to the challenges of plastic waste in the environment short of banning single-use plastics.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve warned you before in previous blogs: The \u201cgreens\u201d do not want recycling to succeed in any way, shape, or form! They have found many reasons to denounce mechanical recycling and why that method doesn\u2019t work because they really do not want plastics to be collected, sorted, and shipped around the country to various recycling centers to be made into more plastic. That, my friends, is not their goal. In fact, they absolutely hate the idea that plastic recycling can be used in a \u201ccircular\u201d way to create more plastics.<\/p>\n

So, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation with its brave, new world of a \u201ccircular economy\u201d can kiss that idea goodbye! That plan will never fly with the plastics haters of the world.<\/p>\n

Advanced recycling processes, about which I\u2019ve written recently, seem to be a good idea \u2014 especially those technologies than can take plastics numbered 3 to 7 that are difficult-to-impossible to mechanically recycle \u2014 and create fuel and other base chemicals. But that often involves processes such as pyrolysis, and the greens have found a reason to hate that, as well.<\/p>\n

The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) sent me a notice about a recent \u201ctechnical analysis\u201d by that group revealing that chemical recycling is polluting, energy intensive, and has a track record of technical failures. The report concludes that it is \u201cimpossible for chemical recycling to be a viable solution in the short window of time left to solve the plastic problem, especially at the scale needed.\u201c<\/p>\n

Dr. Neil Tangri, Science and Policy Director at GAIA, commented, \u201cThere is a lot of talk about chemical recycling as the next wave of recycling, but most of these companies are just turning plastic into fuel to burn it. That\u2019s not recycling \u2014\u00a0that\u2019s just an expensive and convoluted way of burning fossil fuels. Even when they try to turn it back into plastic, most of the material is lost in the process. This is a dead-end technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Key findings of this GAIA-produced analysis conclude that chemical recycling is an environmental health risk. (Here we go again!) \u201cPlastic waste contains toxins, and heating plastic creates even more,\u201d said one finding. \u201cAll of those toxic substances must go somewhere \u2014 into the air, the water, and the final products. Pyrolysis, the most commonly used chemical recycling technology, produces more emissions than waste incineration.\u201d<\/p>\n

GAIA accuses the plastics industry of \u201cgrossly\u201d overstating the feasibility of chemical recycling and understating is emissions. \u201cThe lack of robust independent reporting and monitoring of chemical recycling facilities has led to it being portrayed well above and beyond its capabilities,\u201d said GAIA.<\/p>\n

The study, says GAIA, shows that chemical recycling has a \u201clarge carbon footprint, and poses a climate risk.\u201d More plastic waste is turned into greenhouse-gas emissions than back into plastic, something that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, it claims, and \u201cwe urgently need to decarbonize our society now.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may sound simple, but it might not be possible given that we live in a carbon-based world \u2014 carbon is ubiquitous in all life. Carbon is often called the \u201cking of elements,\u201d as there is enormous diversity of carbon-containing compounds known as organic compounds. Carbon is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen.<\/p>\n

Every time we breathe out, we produce carbon dioxide which is very helpful to the plants that are the source of our own oxygen, which enables us to live. So, does GAIA have any idea where we will get our oxygen if we \u201cdecarbonize\u201d the entire Earth?<\/p>\n

Lastly, GAIA concludes that chemical recycling will not solve the plastic crisis because \u201cvery little of the waste plastic actually becomes new plastic. Most is lost in the process, so it cannot qualify to be part of a circular economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That might be news to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.<\/p>\n

Dr. Andrew Neil Rollinson, a chemical reactor engineer and specialist in alternative thermal conversion technologies and one of the authors of the GAIA report, states, \u201cWhile such a solution may seem ideal, sound engineering practice and common sense show that chemical recycling is not the answer to society\u2019s problem of plastic waste. It represents a dangerous distraction from the need for governments to ban single-use and unnecessary plastics, while simultaneously locking society in a \u2018business as usual\u2019 future of more oil and gas consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

GAIA\u2019s study represents further proof that the anti-plastic people of the world do not want the industry to find any solutions at all to the challenges of plastic waste in the environment. Every solution that the industry develops ultimately is found to be, at the least, unacceptable and, at worst, another dangerous process that supports the \u201ctoxic plastics\u201d narrative, which has no basis in scientific fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A \u201ctechnical study\u201d from the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives is further proof that the greens will not support solutions to the challenges of plastic waste in the environment short of banning single-use plastics. I\u2019ve warned you before in previous blogs: The \u201cgreens\u201d do not want recycling to succeed in any way, shape, or form! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,17143],"tags":[17202,10416,11966,10453],"supplier":[17652],"class_list":["post-80604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","category-recycling","tag-chemicalrecycling","tag-circulareconomy","tag-plastics","tag-recycling","supplier-global-alliance-for-incinerator-alternatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80604"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=80604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}