@@denisdaly1708 what point? And what am I ignorant of? What I said is true. Nobody is stopping you from leaving. It's not true that intelligence is hard to come by in america.
There needs to be more motivation for companies to reduce their packaging and hard to recycle packaging. If they offered tax incentives for better packaging and after a grace period, fines for bad packaging it would help a lot. Designing for easy recycling should be a priority for manufacturers.
especially when most of the time, companies don't produce their own packaging. There are specific companies managing supplychains that can be targeted with little effort and impact a huge part of the market.
You're absolutely right, mono-material packaging has been overlooked due to inferior barrier performance compared to laminated layers of different polymers
@@mousetails9 Mono-materials weren't "overlooked". They were totally looked at, they just weren't effective. If consumers hadn't been brainwashed into believing that preservative were killing them, then we could use simpler, cheaper packaging. If you call a chemical a "preservative", people are terrified. If you call the exact same thing an "antioxidant", which is exactly what it is, then they want to take it in pill form.
Looks good David, but maybe a 50 cent deposit on each bottle and 25 cent on each bag,wrapper,etc. Would get ppl saving them up and cashing them in. My farm is surrounded by roads where ppl just toss their bits and bottles out of their vehicle windows, and it's worse on deserted stretches. We could police it better, but if there was money in pop bottles the slobs would save them up! Then this new process would encompass more of the waste stream, lest it all go into carpets and plastic lumber.
Even in the absence of improved technologies for recycling plastic, reusable glass, recyclable metal, and in some applications even plain old paper could retake some market share if those 'externalities' weren't distorting the market in favour of disposable plastic.
@@IronMan-wz8dx The govt doesn't make them do that for two reasons. One reason is that it would make products more expensive, and people would get mad and vote them out of office. The other reason is that the companies that make stuff either buy off the politicians or use their money to support primary challengers in order to get uncooperative politicians out of office.
@@incognitotorpedo42 If people know the goal is to have cleaner environment then they will support it. How else are cities able to remove plastic bags and charge per bag. Companies can influence it but knowing that the cost of no change is more negative to society, they will adapt to better alternatives.
@@IronMan-wz8dx Sure, maybe that works in Portland or San Francisco, but it doesn't work very well in impoverished countries. That's where the vast majority of ocean plastic comes from.
Back in the 70's the location that is now the Google campus was bay land. There was a company making plastic tampon parts that were recalled. They literally filled in the baylands with tampon inserters. I watched as they dumped acres and acres of plastic.
In Denmark we unfortunately mostly reuse plastics only once, in the form of burning it to replace coal, oil or gas. But at least it won't end up in the seas or other nature habitats.
That's OK for now provided that it's oxidized enough to break it down to not much bigger than CO2 & H2O, no dioxins or furans (if memroy serves on the names). I assume that's all been theorized & monitored.
Positives are hard to come by in this age of destruction, so I appreciate that you're looking for something to alleviate the constant dismay. Two things that strike me about this are 1, that it's been well proven by observation that when humans realise new efficiencies in production systems to solve wastage issues, the outcome is usually not that we do the same amount of production more efficiently, but that we do a lot more production a bit more efficiently, resulting little or no wastage saving and sometimes a net increase in wastage, which suggests that if we find a good way of recycling plastic we'll no doubt just go all out extracting more oil and making ever more stuff out of plastic, and 2, even if we can recycle it well, it doesn't really solve the problem that plastic things degrade into the environment throughout their life cycles resulting in micro plastics now being in most of our food, in the water supply, in rain and even in the air, and arguably, keeping plastic going round and round infinitely just extends that problem into a much longer timeframe. I think we're only going to solve our fundamental problems by having a fundamental rethink of our relationship to whole of nature, which includes our relationship to ourselves.
Reduce the population you reduce the number of buyers and thus demand. So no point in/intentive to creating more. This recycling is just one aspect if a solution. We are already finding bugs that eat and convert plastics. Give it time, research is ongoing.
You describe what is generally known as „rebound effect“. And you are right that solving the problem requires fundamental change in our personality and relations. As Stephen Emmott put it: „We are not going to technologize our way out of it“.
@@achenarmyst2156 yes, government policy is almost always based on 'how can we enable corporations to keep doing what they're doing for a bit longer' - how can we tweak things to make it at least appear in the short term that we're somehow on track to make an entirely unsustainable system vaguely sustainable at some point in the future. And of course, if you actually want to change anything, you have to do it yourself because waiting for vested interests to legislate themselves out of existence is futile.
I’m not a big fan of governments telling us what to do but I would support rules coming in to reduce non recyclable food packaging even if it cost me a few extra pence per item. Less different types of packaging would surly help easing how they are then recycled. Cheers
A had begun to despair that we might be saddled with the state of largely non-recycled plastics, and an ever growing pile of [for example] empty single-use plastic water bottles, scattered across the environment as if it is some vast bin. These developments bring back a little hope in me [thank you for bringing this to us, Dave]. Is technology alone going to rescue us? I think it might have to, because I'm not sure a significant percentage of able populations are that fussed about helping out.
When I started studying environmental matters in the mid 90’s the mantra was ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ over time this has expanded to ‘refuse (as in reject), reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose, reclaim (materials content before energy content), refuse (as in landfill). Packaging slows, maybe even prevents waste of product. In the global North where extravagance is the villain there is lots of packaging, kill that villain and you have contained the big evil. In the global South where spoilage is the villain more and better packaging may actually reduce the harm and suffering. This sword has two edges but the real issue is there are just too many of us!
Congratulations on yet another well-crafted and informative video! Excess perpetuating plastics, are one of the many contemporary crises that lead one to despondency. So, well done for shining some light on the situation, and offering some hope! I have long pondered what an ordinary citizen like me can do, to contribute to an improvement in this impending plastic disaster? Obviously, I am not able to influence things at the technological or industrial level. But it seems to me, that what is in the gift of the ordinary citizen is their power as a consumer to make ethical choices about the goods that they purchase. However, many of us with similar intentions, are often hamstrung by the fact that the opportunities to purchase goods that are free of plastic packaging, are few and far between. One or two, enterprising establishments have appeared, such as the Clean Kilo, for instance, but these are tiny in comparison to the huge supermarkets, which form the bulk of retailers. I therefore think that the best thing that ordinary citizens like myself can do, is through joining pressure groups, (XR, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace etc), and participating in shaming, lobbying, and divestment campaigns, put pressure on the manufacturers and governmental institutions, in order to bring about change at the root of the problem, that is, the lack of any meaningful choice in the way goods are packaged. We have recently seen some progress in the reduction of the amounts of plastic bags, straws, and cotton buds, for instance, so there is hope. But there is still a long way to go to achieve any meaningful improvement in packaging alternatives, and so we must keep up the pressure!
Hello Dave, I believe the ultimate use for recycled plastics should be as building materials. In the US one sees construction sides still using great amounts of wood which could be easily replaced by recycled plastic. Much more durable than wood and as you said virtually everlasting, it's place is within the building of structures made to last.
Yeah but you only want to use RECYCLED plastic there and if you don't then you effectively create another reason for oil and gas industry to keep exploring and polluting 🤔
@@billhanna2148 of course! The idea would be to give use to the immense amount of plastic waste that can't be completely recovered for re-use in the same packaging products. Additionally from removing this waste from the environment, replacing the use of wood for construction and putting a stop to rapid and unsustainable deforestation.
@@crilako I am agreeing with you since there is an RIDICULOUS amount of plastic waste that can be harvested easily (there's even more than that in the oceans which is not) but eventually ... you have to make more
We try to buy foods and other products in bulk and re-use plastic or glass containers. Those sheets of waxed cloth work really well to seal open bowls or containers and can be rinsed for re-use many times.
I miss the old glass jar and lid for condiments - mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise - I dislike all the plastic squeeze bottles for more than just their plastic content. Glass is highly recyclable.
Great report Dave, thank you... so many polymers and copolymers convine in a so many different finish products in the market today that makes so difficult to segregate them. The core of the process you showed is this mysterious solvent which I assume is a combination of plastic solvents like thinners... thank you
A really excellent presentation on a couple of very significant projects that are possibly nearing pilot stage. Many thanks Dave for your untiring efforts to keep us up to date on the issues that affect the health of the planet.
Thanks for the update on the state of plastics recovery/recycling/rejuvenation. Humanity will never stop making & using these valuable materials, but we can all benefit from cost-effective methods of keeping the wastes out of our greater environment. Streets with empty plastic carrier bags blowing in the wind are ugly.
What about that little process called "Depolymerization"? I heard of it about five years ago and it uses pressure, vacuum, and heat, to break down nearly everything man made. What ever came of that?....I need to look that up Thanx for this great video ! ! !
Very informative video - thank you justhaveathink for your research. I work in the Fraunhofer IVV and am happy to see more and more people discovering this amazing recycling technology which is still in its infacy. It is very encouraging to see that we have working on one of the most promising technologies in order to help solve the recycling dilemma. I would be happy to get in touch with you and get to know you as well as support you if you need any information.
I would love to see plastic recycling programs become more efficient and environmentally friendly, would be so cool to see Recycled Printing filaments be the new norm. Awesome video, cheers
I will definitely be passing this one onto my employer's head office who have a big stake in plastic recycling in Australia & actively encourage employee input.
Might I beg for an updated view on plasma gasification? From what I have seen it was abandoned just because oil and gas prices dropped. Yet I think it might provide universal answer to recycling and recovery needs, that can also generate or use clean energy as is needed. Much of our consumer waste stream could go in unsorted, and produce only clean gases and energy and recovered aluminum.
Grind it up and create paving material. For plastic bottles, cap them, use plastic netting to great floating islands, throw some dirt on top. Add bottles as required to maintain floatation.
I realy hope, that there will be an alternativ. It’s very hard to not end up with another plastic bag every time we go shopping. On another note, I finaly stopped eating meat, I cold not keep on blaming everybody else, and not do it 100% myself. 😇 yeah I know, what a wa***r ...but there it is. Another good one David I’m still happy to pay my patron part every 30/31 days. I whis I could pay you more, you are doing a great job.👍🏼
The two major supermarket chains in Australia have shopping bags manufactured from 80+ % recycled plastic. Real deal, too, involving post-consumer material. One knows this to be the case because it was a German initiative. Not, for example, industrial cast-off resin. But not manufactured in Australia, but in Malaysia and Thailand. And there is the problem, because once these shopping bags hit Australia it is LDPE not going around again as new LDPE products upon them being discarded, because the best it can become after that is road base or park benches. But they are freakin good bags, being sturdy, spacious, and utterly durable. Better than the weak, inadequate crap they served up prior to the introduction of these ones.
Some eastern european technologists of decades ago perfected boiling crops of harvested flowers for starch and mixing it with the plastics producing a product with starch at points along the polymer chains which bacteria in the soil loved and quickly broke down the full product. This had the potential to be simple and cheap and a convenient solution to the plastic part of the landfill buildup. The fact that it wasn't used shows how serious people were about dealing with plastic wastes.
I love to see you presenting sollutions for seemingly insurmountable problems Dave ! Thanks, and thanks to the EU for focussing on and funding these kind of innovations !
I do not see the problem. Plastic burns and generates a lot of energy so burning saves oil. What advantage should recycling have? I only see disadvantages
@@TheSpecio You have to extract oil in either case (extract oil --> burn oil; extract oil --> create polymeres --> burn plastic). Recycling creates ressources in our own backyards so to speak, preventing the need for installing complicated infrastructure in remote and extreme places on our earth to get them were they are needed. It also is way more sustainable, benefitting our well-being by protecting the environment from damage. We probably already created an unsolvable problem with nano-plastic.
@@Vulcano7965 Yes, you have to extract oil in either case: collect plastic > Extract oil to fuel the recycling process > recycle plastic to low-quality new plastic. Let me show you how this 'recycling' works in the real world: Collecting the plastic for recycling instead of burning it with the mixes waste deprives the waste of energy. In order to incinerate the now low-energy waste, oil is sprayed on it; without this oil, it wouldn't even burn. And if you fear nano-plastic, you have to ban plastic at all. This would lead to an immense waste of wood, fabric for packing, waste of energy (For example the very energy-intensive production of glass as a substitute) etc, immense destruction of agricultural products which we protect by packaging in plastic, waste of oil and gas because we would not insulate our homes as well without plastic foam and dozens of other disadvantages. Plastic is SAVING gas, oil, and coal, protecting the environment by reducing the needed area for agriculture, improving our living standard and preventing over-exploitation of natural resources like forests or arable land for the production of natural fibres instead of synthetic ones and, and... In short: get real!
@@TheSpecio We're talking about the processes mentioned in the video. So you base your whole assumption on this: "collect plastic > Extract oil to fuel the recycling process > *recycle plastic to low-quality new plastic.* " You don't need to ban plastic entirely to prevent further contamination of micro + nano-plastic, that's a strawman. You need to recycle the used plastic back into a production cycle so it doesn't need to be thrown in landfills. That's the whole issue this video is addressing. It's very likely that Oil and Gas will still be around in the coming decades, although only/mostly for plastic production, since there will always some loss in the recycling process. So I'm not quite sure what you're so mad about. Electricity generated by waste incineration makes up a tiny fraction of our energy production.
@@Vulcano7965 I am talking about intelligent and cost-effective ways of managing our plastic demands. No one wants to throw it in landfills. I said: BURN it! Effect: No nano-plastic. And because this ist cost-effective, it's easier to enforce. Right now, plastic fuel is already profitable for the cement industry (rotary kilns, very effective for burning old tires too) and iron industry (shredded plastic is blown into blast furnaces together with combustion air, saving HUGE amounts of coal and oil) And my whole assumption ist: You need LESS oil if you incinerate used plastic to produce energy and make new plastic out of oil. 'Recycling' plastic is a no-brainer. It doesn't have even a single advantage.
Here in Québec, we have Pyrowave and Loop Industries who developped a similar technology. They break down all plastics to their monomere form and then rebuild them into whatever they want.
Arguably, it's not a matter of "hydrocarbons" itself, but sustainability / equilibrium that is the most helpful goal. You want some process that has zero net externalities. Making these out of elements which are less common already in our environment would make us more in peril. Then, any process, no matter how much more efficient and in creation of consumer level equilibrium, that then brings elements / compounds which are out of equilibrium to out of balance accumulations, may be problematic. So if you make a beautiful process of re-use, but it makes some cute little radio-active something as a side effect, you are not only back to square one, but may be even worse off. As a lesson, therefore, I counsel once again that our very very very first goal should be reduced use, then re-use right after that. I know you know that saw, Dave. I also realize that we may be on a point where in the next decade or so may be the last time we have the resources to come up with some of these new ideas, given the downturn that comes as the temperature goes up may be far worse than we all anticipate. Still, if we all keep this as a bias, reduce and reuse first, we are more likely to focus our activities where they mitigate problems most, and not just where Wall Street and London can most easily put their monies.
Boyan Slat of Ocean Cleanup recently released some videos showing how his team turned ocean and river plastic into brand new sunglasses, and the remains of Wilson the floating system of buoys used to clean up ocean plastic to create the case.
I have some swimming trunks made of a material called Econyl, which is recycled nylon (from fishnets and such). Feels like the quality of virgin nylon.
Thanks for this clear presentation of these hopeful changes on the horizon. I'll share with our students and lake stewards as we address the microplastics and debris in Lake Champlain.
We are short on housing here in the UK, and in many other countries. Shouldn't it be recycled into building materials? Reduce wood use (less trees cut down), it lasts for a very long time, doesn't rust or rot, can be easily moulded to whatever shape is needed, plastic is a good insulator, and sound absorber. We have a lot, and need a lot for building materials. It's perfect. Councils don't want it, and as a building material it's free and the only cost is in processing it. There are plenty of re-uses if we only use our noodle.
The creasolve process would be highly useful on site at textile factories and other similar factories that produce scrap material in the production process
Great scientific progress. The creasolv solvent shouldn't be a secret. We need to make this science widely available for all countries and companies to use so we can deal with this crisis.
Agreed, but it'll never happen. They didn't even make them choose between monopoly and secrecy, they gave them _both_! That's not the logic under which patents were originally sold to society! I'm so depressed right now.
Creasolv: imagine finding out that production and disposal of that solvent mixture is horrendous for the environment. Definitely not gonna happen, right... right?
sboooon - most solvents that can dissolve plastics are fairly harmless, especially things like ionic liquids which are classed as green solvents. Anyway it won’t be disposed of, it will be recycled continually. And if you do need to dispose of solvents then you just burn them in an incinerator fitted with scrubbers.
Some of what we need to look into is the how items are transported and distributed. Maybe things don't need to be packaged in a large plastic container. Maybe if we bring our contains to the store and filled from a bulk container or wrapped in butcher's paper for meats likes the old days.
@Just Have a Think If you haven't already, you should make a video on Thermal Depolymerisation. It's a process that converts organic waste (and possibly hydrocarbons) into a light crude oil.
Sounds to me the cruz of the issue is that the chemical process can help with some plastics but doesn't help for all plastics, presorting that the chemistry can do its thing is important as the reaction and purity would increase. Have seen some AI object detection machines used in the industry that help with that on the line, a thought that popped into my head and I see some obvious issues, but why not detect or etch and detect a product identifier in the source (like a QR code) to assist with object detection, this also can help train the object classifier. It seems eminently doable to have electric recycling trucks, solar power/battery from either grid or on site to run the classifiers, scale up as volume is important, and convert it to high quality materials. The economic question becomes: is export of materials and this process cheaper to produce then virgin plastics to compete with (it seems like virgin plastics unless taxed will always be cheaper) or as a bare minimum are the exports capable of sustaining the business without external funding. If so then it seems like this can, in the limit, clean up all material easily reachable in the environment.
@@Jay...777 yes of course. Sensible people working together to solve common goals. I can agree with that. Big problems require more participants and resources. And we stand on the shoulders of giants, don't disagree with that either. Even my ideas aren't my own, they have been triggered by the video and other sources as well. Leave them as a gift. You can only effect your part of the stream of life, and perhaps make small waves, hopefully those waves cascade in positive patterns. As to the original idea. It makes it easy for people in that position to create a higher quality output, it would be a decision that gets made at that specific facility, recycling makes sense, having recycling be better makes sense, selling the output that they produce out of that waste makes sense, as it's output is the raw inputs for other production chains - to produce those goods we love so very very much makes sense in that context. (Last part was a bit tongue in cheek) If you think about recycling as a self funding cleanup program, a biological analogy would be a scavenger, it provides a useful role in cleaning up of the waste. If the scavenger can move faster/do more than the production of waste, then you end the cycle, essentially all waste, even landfill could with an efficient enough process be converted into something useful.
We have two problems in industry at the moment: companies are pushing to sell you ever more products and do this by forcing you to stop using perfectly good products: cars, phones, household white goods, and computers being some of the main culprits. On the other hand, we have governments punishing people for trying to dispose of waste. Governments should be clamping down on manufacturers to build things to last instead of built-in obsolescence. One fact: 25% of plastic produced is thermo-setting plastic which cannot be recycled. Some products cannot be made from thermoplastic, kettles, electrical fittings, and can therefore never be recycled. We need to go back to using other materials where possible, such as wood, metal, paper, and card. I hope this recycling process works out but a couple of things never considered, even by "greens": use less/waste less. A much more effective way of reducing electricity consumption is a change of mind by people, not making it more expensive and punishing the poor. One of your better videos but I do get tired of hearing all the same of "Anthropogenic Climate Change" memes.
The main problem is, that selling one product that last long will not be profitable in the long run. I think then there need to be other ways around it like. If you buy a phone the phone will be expensive and you will get other subscription model types like apple does. The only problem is that they bring out a new phone every year eventho their phones can be used for 5+year with no real problems.
@@LemonsRage Thanks for the comment, that's my point. On the one hand we have stupid governments listening to "experts" (most of them are charlatans) and bringing in draconian "green" policies which generally involve higher taxes to punish us for consumption, but not addressing the real problem, the companies who keep bringing out updated products with built-in obsolescence. Then there are the fashion idiots who just have to have the latest model. I'm doing my bit, I use an iphone 4G which still does what I need, texts and phone calls, and a third-gen Ipad (Retina) which also does what I need, mainly taking photos and video. I don't upgrade computers until I can no longer run the version of Windows. I kept my last car for 18 years and the only reason I scrapped it was because I could not afford to have it completely reqired, which is what it needed. I had driven less than 150,000 miles. I was brought up in the 1950s when everything was in short supply, and still have that mental attitude towards waste. Have a very good day.
Fascinating science & potential technology. I bet the special sauce is Marmite. Keep an eye out for secretive bulk purchases of Marmite, stores sold out and whatnot.
another great bit of news..although I do hope it isn't like the TV program (tomorrows world) I used to watch on TV where I would hear about great, world-changing, technological advances every week and hardly ever hear about them again)
That's because of patents. If the first company doesn't work out all the bugs (and they probably won't) before they go out of business, the technology will sleep for 20-ish years for the patents to expire before research on solutions starts at other companies-- then, because modern patents are deliberately written to be vague and/or misleading rather than accurately describing the invention as they were originally meant to, the companies that start working on improved versions run into setback after expensive and time-consuming setback just in recreating the original version, even before they make their own improvements. Any improvements they DO make (or think a competitor might make in the near future) are immediately patented themselves, and the cycle repeats. It ends when a practical version eventually emerges after a several cycles, but goes on again between "generations" of the technology.
For many years I have thought that governments should have mandated by law [with very severe penalties for noncompliance] that the companies producing these different types of plastic [and styrofoam] must have a process in place that will either break them down or disintegrate these products before any distribution would be allowed. But, of course, governments are the primary partners of business in Market Capitalism. These negative externalities produced by capitalist markets are never the concern of business, and the cost of dealing with them always falls upon the public.
All this high tech rocket science stuff is all very well, and should be necessarily advanced. But without folding or winding back on the more mundane recycling of post-consumer plastic, particularly in relation to the high turnover consumer stuff. Because a considerable portion of post-consumer PET, for example, is in fact making its way back onto supermarket and shop shelves as new containers. It must be, because increasing numbers of beverage brands are being labelled as either 50 % or 100 % " recycled plastic " or " recycled PET ". Some of it may well be a rort and not specifically post-consumer, but most of it has to be. There are watchdogs on it. If its recycled PET then the containers are generally softer and dent easily. But they nevertheless move from the shelves and enter the commercial turnover stream. And that is the thing.
I had this idea of turning plastic waste into new plastic, when I was given project to do in high school science class. It was about making a invention that would change the world. So I came across a video on the internet about a person in a 3rd world country making diesel fuel from plastic waste by pryloisis and I wanted to make one for myself, but I wanted to modify it by turning the the plastic waste oil back into the original plastic by refining it distilling it back into a refined crude oil that you can use to make new plastic polymers. I haven't made it yet. What do you think about that idea?
Environmental costs should be mandatorily worked into the price of all objects. Including the pollutants during mining resources, production, shipping, warehousing, etc. The true cost of an item includes cleaning up the mess that product makes of the environment.
This is the only alternate dim where its not frauding us reusing the same plastic. Whatever 70 years of jar subjective designs has led us to .. not even design...
Good vid. We need to focus on and dramatically reduce personal purchases of food and drink that comes in plastic containers. It might appear to be convenient for the consumer, but are we destroying our ecosystems for mere convenience? This is clearly the case. We must all address this personal consumption of plastic issue. Convenience before common sense?
Great news! Combine efforts to recycle plastics with 3d printing from the Internet Of Things to provide low cost items of all kinds. Put the printers in communities around town, supply them from the local recycling plant and let folks order things from the IOC, to be printed and either picked up (or shipped, if needed). Costs would be minimal and the economic impact could be enormous.
Can u please have a think on bio plastics and biofuels to underline their potential? What you greatly exposed is the solution for a problem that we already have. Part of the problem, by my point of view, can be solved only by a serious re-engineering of the whole product chain, adopting a new class of materials that can do the job without a particular change in production technology and machinery, to make it economically sustainable. I can give a hint on what I personally work on: PET to PEF transition By the way, thank u so much for your very interesting divulgatio work!
What a fantastic thing, to be really able to utilize all this trash plastic and (hopefully) not make any virgin plastic, eventually working in some other and better solution entirely. Maybe could use that ocean trash as well? Love this channel, contains some great thinking. :-) The US would have a problem with this one though, as the mega-corporations would resist it.
There are micro organisms discovered that actually 'eat' certain types of plastics. This should be developed and used for things such as the "Great Pacific garbage patch"
Thanks for the insights on Renewable energy production and now recycling. There is a large shift away from destruction of the earth under way. Not of human construct, we all know money rules currently. Soon that will change, I hope I can count on those who are truly concerned for the dying environment to be ready to hit the ground running! Large scale protection and rehabilitation will soon be what we (Humans) do. Keep up the good work Just have a think guy! The rest of you keep studying and be ready for sudden change!
My idea would be to modify bacteria that can break it down, bioengineer it to not only break it down but to produce fresh hydrocarbon chains from it, the end goal could even be to have to organism use photosynthesis to power itself
We currently have the ability/technology to reduce plastic, paper, wood, sewage, animal guts, skins, eyeballs, or any other organic waste, (which is most of our garbage,) into oil and then to create plastic and/or fuel. The energy is available in the form of solar, geothermal and nuclear, molten salt reactors.
Something I'm wondering is since sorting the plastics prior to reprocessing is one of the big issues of recycling, I'm wondering if some processes proposed here, such as the CreoSolv process, can at least address the sorting issue by selectively dissolving the targeted polymer chains, then allowing the same feed stock to be reprocessed to target another polymer. I would also like to see some attention focused on thermal management of these processes (possibly like refrigeration to condense the distillate solvent being deposited back into the boiler vessel,) and the resulting energy comparison.
Sounds like a good place to spend some R&D funds. Personally I like the plastics to pavement initiative as well as the plastic to diesel plants that are catching on more and more. Incineration is the best simple solution after recycling, but as we know China no longer wants to deal with our waste so we ought to. Sweden and Japan have great incineration plants that deserve more attention
Low cost plastic from high cost recycling. Plus the facts of oil distillation, puts doubts on the viability of these efforts. Maybe will be viable when fusion power gets here.
I've tried to find information on the energy requirements for their tech but all I managed to find in their site was this quote "As energy use is the primary contributor to the impact, the main recommendation drawn at this stage is to improve the energy efficiency of the process." They're playing their cards close to their chest on this one at this stage so I can only speculate but I'm going to do exactly that! *This will still be an extremely energy intensive process* The solvents in the process will be energy intensive to produce, the optimal temperature for catalysis will be high, the distillation process with require massive heat energy input, the drying of the product will require energy and the extruding of the polymers into pellets will be about the only low energy stage. This is all dictated by the laws of thermodynamics. Technologies like this are crucial, I don't need to explain why single use plastic is bad, and therefore energy is even more crucial; both electrical energy and HEAT energy (which is probably the main energy input for this whole process) SO... What energy generation technology has a low environmental footprint and could reliably power such a process 24/7 both with electricity and with heat? *Nuclear* Recycling is one of the examples I use to explain why "degrowth" (particularly of energy- sometimes in the form of unreliables) is a recipe for disaster. Other than recycling, the expansion of nuclear energy will be paramount for: -Sea water desalination -Hydrogen production -Synthetic hydrocarbon production -Carbon capture and storage -Displacing fossil fuels without destroying the environment -And many more If you think recycling or anything else on that list is important you should support nuclear!
But wasn't the intial problem sorting the diffrent types of plastics? From what I get creasolv can extrakt the polymerchains out of one type of plastic but you still need to sort it first. In 3:25 you say that separating them is expensive and time consuming.
Why a complicated and energy-consuming pyrolysis to make fuel and then burn the fuel instead of burning the plastic itself? The latter is simpler, cheaper and more effective!
I like our Australian developed process which breaks down waste plastics with heat, steam and pressure into a recyclable plastic liquid. It only remains to be seen if anyone is interested in paying enough to make actual recycling of plastics economic rather than mythological.
What about plasma gasification plants? The only waste is plasma rock. They atomize everything you put in it and then you can separate the gases and use some to fuel an engine that creates electricity. It's even energy positive. So it's an everything recycler + a powerplant.
thank you for yet another interesting video. Can i just ask if you have been adjusting your microphone recently? I'm hearing the inhale between each sentence, and even tiny tiny ghasps for each comma.
It's just Mister Think's been advised to increase the drama, get closer to matching the dramatic music backgrounds of climate videos from both opposing teams. Like the starvation & Death of Little Ice Age, The Horror ! THE HORROR !
Could we insist that all the films are compostable , and that all other plastics are separated from other rubbish , and cleaned , and then landfill that to be remined,and reprocessed at a later date ? Rather than waiting for 20 years for the perfect system ....
Hi there the plastic problem is not a problem firstly as an plastic process technologist plastic can be recycled so 30 percent can be introduced back into the virgin processing only at 10 percent because polymers change their micro crystalline another words ultraviolet radiation and acids change its basically properties. The recycling is labour intensive and is not cheap unless you get free labour by using the unemployed, a Canadian Ukrainian in Toronto developed a pyrololygis of turning plastic waste back plax crude but now it is expensive to do so waste to energy is another way of controlling waste .
I think plastic is one of those huge ecological crises that is just too overwhelming for most people to affectively reduce on their own. I love to see new technological solutions, but lasting change is going to require strong government and industry cooperation and public education campaigns to reach a sustainable balance.
Dave is such an amazing teacher! Thanks for these videos; I need a spot of thoughtful intelligence here in the US (hard to come by here!)
No truer words spoken 😎💪
Wow, thank you! :-)
Nobody is stopping you from leaving.
@@boof_itall3898 of course your ignorant reply did not address any point that he made. In a way, you confirmed his points.
@@denisdaly1708 what point?
And what am I ignorant of?
What I said is true. Nobody is stopping you from leaving.
It's not true that intelligence is hard to come by in america.
Thank you for being a wonderful teacher.
Cheers Ricky. Thanks for watching!
There needs to be more motivation for companies to reduce their packaging and hard to recycle packaging. If they offered tax incentives for better packaging and after a grace period, fines for bad packaging it would help a lot. Designing for easy recycling should be a priority for manufacturers.
especially when most of the time, companies don't produce their own packaging. There are specific companies managing supplychains that can be targeted with little effort and impact a huge part of the market.
You're absolutely right, mono-material packaging has been overlooked due to inferior barrier performance compared to laminated layers of different polymers
Companies that are still packaging goods in polystyrene blocks should be shamed.
We need to make them pay for the damage and ban single-use outright. Plastic bottles of water only benefit a small group of owners.
@@mousetails9 Mono-materials weren't "overlooked". They were totally looked at, they just weren't effective. If consumers hadn't been brainwashed into believing that preservative were killing them, then we could use simpler, cheaper packaging. If you call a chemical a "preservative", people are terrified. If you call the exact same thing an "antioxidant", which is exactly what it is, then they want to take it in pill form.
Looks good David, but maybe a 50 cent deposit on each bottle and 25 cent on each bag,wrapper,etc. Would get ppl saving them up and cashing them in. My farm is surrounded by roads where ppl just toss their bits and bottles out of their vehicle windows, and it's worse on deserted stretches. We could police it better, but if there was money in pop bottles the slobs would save them up! Then this new process would encompass more of the waste stream, lest it all go into carpets and plastic lumber.
Plastics manufacturing will reduce its environmental impact when the manufacturers are made to bear the burden of their products' end-of-life.
i dont get why govt dont make them do that.
Even in the absence of improved technologies for recycling plastic, reusable glass, recyclable metal, and in some applications even plain old paper could retake some market share if those 'externalities' weren't distorting the market in favour of disposable plastic.
@@IronMan-wz8dx The govt doesn't make them do that for two reasons. One reason is that it would make products more expensive, and people would get mad and vote them out of office. The other reason is that the companies that make stuff either buy off the politicians or use their money to support primary challengers in order to get uncooperative politicians out of office.
@@incognitotorpedo42 If people know the goal is to have cleaner environment then they will support it. How else are cities able to remove plastic bags and charge per bag. Companies can influence it but knowing that the cost of no change is more negative to society, they will adapt to better alternatives.
@@IronMan-wz8dx Sure, maybe that works in Portland or San Francisco, but it doesn't work very well in impoverished countries. That's where the vast majority of ocean plastic comes from.
Back in the 70's the location that is now the Google campus was bay land. There was a company making plastic tampon parts that were recalled. They literally filled in the baylands with tampon inserters. I watched as they dumped acres and acres of plastic.
😢
Yeah, bad stuff used to happen a lot. Now that kind of thing is a lot more rare, at least in the developed world.
In Denmark we unfortunately mostly reuse plastics only once, in the form of burning it to replace coal, oil or gas.
But at least it won't end up in the seas or other nature habitats.
That's OK for now provided that it's oxidized enough to break it down to not much bigger than CO2 & H2O, no dioxins or furans (if memroy serves on the names). I assume that's all been theorized & monitored.
Positives are hard to come by in this age of destruction, so I appreciate that you're looking for something to alleviate the constant dismay. Two things that strike me about this are 1, that it's been well proven by observation that when humans realise new efficiencies in production systems to solve wastage issues, the outcome is usually not that we do the same amount of production more efficiently, but that we do a lot more production a bit more efficiently, resulting little or no wastage saving and sometimes a net increase in wastage, which suggests that if we find a good way of recycling plastic we'll no doubt just go all out extracting more oil and making ever more stuff out of plastic, and 2, even if we can recycle it well, it doesn't really solve the problem that plastic things degrade into the environment throughout their life cycles resulting in micro plastics now being in most of our food, in the water supply, in rain and even in the air, and arguably, keeping plastic going round and round infinitely just extends that problem into a much longer timeframe. I think we're only going to solve our fundamental problems by having a fundamental rethink of our relationship to whole of nature, which includes our relationship to ourselves.
Here's the problem, humanity has never lived in a more stable and peaceful time. So we have to manufacture
Reduce the population you reduce the number of buyers and thus demand. So no point in/intentive to creating more. This recycling is just one aspect if a solution. We are already finding bugs that eat and convert plastics. Give it time, research is ongoing.
You describe what is generally known as „rebound effect“. And you are right that solving the problem requires fundamental change in our personality and relations. As Stephen Emmott put it: „We are not going to technologize our way out of it“.
@@WideCuriosity We have the means and the technology to adapt and over come untill a huge motherfucking asteroid fucks off 90% of us.
@@achenarmyst2156 yes, government policy is almost always based on 'how can we enable corporations to keep doing what they're doing for a bit longer' - how can we tweak things to make it at least appear in the short term that we're somehow on track to make an entirely unsustainable system vaguely sustainable at some point in the future. And of course, if you actually want to change anything, you have to do it yourself because waiting for vested interests to legislate themselves out of existence is futile.
I’m not a big fan of governments telling us what to do but I would support rules coming in to reduce non recyclable food packaging even if it cost me a few extra pence per item. Less different types of packaging would surly help easing how they are then recycled. Cheers
A had begun to despair that we might be saddled with the state of largely non-recycled plastics, and an ever growing pile of [for example] empty single-use plastic water bottles, scattered across the environment as if it is some vast bin. These developments bring back a little hope in me [thank you for bringing this to us, Dave]. Is technology alone going to rescue us? I think it might have to, because I'm not sure a significant percentage of able populations are that fussed about helping out.
When I started studying environmental matters in the mid 90’s the mantra was ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ over time this has expanded to ‘refuse (as in reject), reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose, reclaim (materials content before energy content), refuse (as in landfill). Packaging slows, maybe even prevents waste of product. In the global North where extravagance is the villain there is lots of packaging, kill that villain and you have contained the big evil. In the global South where spoilage is the villain more and better packaging may actually reduce the harm and suffering. This sword has two edges but the real issue is there are just too many of us!
Congratulations on yet another well-crafted and informative video!
Excess perpetuating plastics, are one of the many contemporary crises that lead one to despondency. So, well done for shining some light on the situation, and offering some hope!
I have long pondered what an ordinary citizen like me can do, to contribute to an improvement in this impending plastic disaster? Obviously, I am not able to influence things at the technological or industrial level. But it seems to me, that what is in the gift of the ordinary citizen is their power as a consumer to make ethical choices about the goods that they purchase. However, many of us with similar intentions, are often hamstrung by the fact that the opportunities to purchase goods that are free of plastic packaging, are few and far between. One or two, enterprising establishments have appeared, such as the Clean Kilo, for instance, but these are tiny in comparison to the huge supermarkets, which form the bulk of retailers.
I therefore think that the best thing that ordinary citizens like myself can do, is through joining pressure groups, (XR, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace etc), and participating in shaming, lobbying, and divestment campaigns, put pressure on the manufacturers and governmental institutions, in order to bring about change at the root of the problem, that is, the lack of any meaningful choice in the way goods are packaged.
We have recently seen some progress in the reduction of the amounts of plastic bags, straws, and cotton buds, for instance, so there is hope. But there is still a long way to go to achieve any meaningful improvement in packaging alternatives, and so we must keep up the pressure!
Hello Dave,
I believe the ultimate use for recycled plastics should be as building materials. In the US one sees construction sides still using great amounts of wood which could be easily replaced by recycled plastic. Much more durable than wood and as you said virtually everlasting, it's place is within the building of structures made to last.
Yeah but you only want to use RECYCLED plastic there and if you don't then you effectively create another reason for oil and gas industry to keep exploring and polluting 🤔
@@billhanna2148 of course! The idea would be to give use to the immense amount of plastic waste that can't be completely recovered for re-use in the same packaging products. Additionally from removing this waste from the environment, replacing the use of wood for construction and putting a stop to rapid and unsustainable deforestation.
@@crilako I am agreeing with you since there is an RIDICULOUS amount of plastic waste that can be harvested easily (there's even more than that in the oceans which is not) but eventually ... you have to make more
@@billhanna2148 agreed. In the meantime... 👍
Very good point Cristian. I agree completely.
We try to buy foods and other products in bulk and re-use plastic or glass containers. Those sheets of waxed cloth work really well to seal open bowls or containers and can be rinsed for re-use many times.
Totally agree with you there, especially the conclusion. Let's hope they make it to the markets, the sooner the better.
One of the best, if not the best, channels on CZcams re environmental technology! Keep up the good work!
It is wonderful listening to an environmentalist who is neither screaming all the time nor condescending. :-)
Standardizing the uses of only certain materials to standard shapes and standard applications to allow for re cycling ease.
I miss the old glass jar and lid for condiments - mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise - I dislike all the plastic squeeze bottles for more than just their plastic content. Glass is highly recyclable.
Great report Dave, thank you... so many polymers and copolymers convine in a so many different finish products in the market today that makes so difficult to segregate them. The core of the process you showed is this mysterious solvent which I assume is a combination of plastic solvents like thinners... thank you
Coca Cola. Buy stock now. Buck the Covid depression.
A really excellent presentation on a couple of very significant projects that are possibly nearing pilot stage. Many thanks Dave for your untiring efforts to keep us up to date on the issues that affect the health of the planet.
These are both encouraging, especially the efforts from the Fraunhofer Institute. Thank you!
Quite interesting video -- solution oriented thinking is needed.
Thanks for the update on the state of plastics recovery/recycling/rejuvenation. Humanity will never stop making & using these valuable materials, but we can all benefit from cost-effective methods of keeping the wastes out of our greater environment. Streets with empty plastic carrier bags blowing in the wind are ugly.
What about that little process called "Depolymerization"? I heard of it about five years ago and it uses pressure, vacuum, and heat, to break down nearly everything man made. What ever came of that?....I need to look that up
Thanx for this great video ! ! !
Very informative video - thank you justhaveathink for your research. I work in the Fraunhofer IVV and am happy to see more and more people discovering this amazing recycling technology which is still in its infacy. It is very encouraging to see that we have working on one of the most promising technologies in order to help solve the recycling dilemma.
I would be happy to get in touch with you and get to know you as well as support you if you need any information.
Great concept.makes gathering ocean plastic worth it
I would love to see plastic recycling programs become more efficient and environmentally friendly, would be so cool to see Recycled Printing filaments be the new norm. Awesome video, cheers
I will definitely be passing this one onto my employer's head office who have a big stake in plastic recycling in Australia & actively encourage employee input.
Might I beg for an updated view on plasma gasification? From what I have seen it was abandoned just because oil and gas prices dropped. Yet I think it might provide universal answer to recycling and recovery needs, that can also generate or use clean energy as is needed. Much of our consumer waste stream could go in unsorted, and produce only clean gases and energy and recovered aluminum.
Grind it up and create paving material. For plastic bottles, cap them, use plastic netting to great floating islands, throw some dirt on top. Add bottles as required to maintain floatation.
I realy hope, that there will be an alternativ. It’s very hard to not end up with another plastic bag every time we go shopping.
On another note, I finaly stopped eating meat, I cold not keep on blaming everybody else, and not do it 100% myself. 😇 yeah I know, what a wa***r ...but there it is.
Another good one David I’m still happy to pay my patron part every 30/31 days. I whis I could pay you more, you are doing a great job.👍🏼
The two major supermarket chains in Australia have shopping bags manufactured from 80+ % recycled plastic. Real deal, too, involving post-consumer material. One knows this to be the case because it was a German initiative. Not, for example, industrial cast-off resin. But not manufactured in Australia, but in Malaysia and Thailand. And there is the problem, because once these shopping bags hit Australia it is LDPE not going around again as new LDPE products upon them being discarded, because the best it can become after that is road base or park benches. But they are freakin good bags, being sturdy, spacious, and utterly durable. Better than the weak, inadequate crap they served up prior to the introduction of these ones.
Great update 👍
Thanks for sharing 👍😀👍
Some eastern european technologists of decades ago perfected boiling crops of harvested flowers for starch and mixing it with the plastics producing a product with starch at points along the polymer chains which bacteria in the soil loved and quickly broke down the full product. This had the potential to be simple and cheap and a convenient solution to the plastic part of the landfill buildup. The fact that it wasn't used shows how serious people were about dealing with plastic wastes.
I love to see you presenting sollutions for seemingly insurmountable problems Dave ! Thanks, and thanks to the EU for focussing on and funding these kind of innovations !
I do not see the problem.
Plastic burns and generates a lot of energy so burning saves oil.
What advantage should recycling have? I only see disadvantages
@@TheSpecio You have to extract oil in either case (extract oil --> burn oil; extract oil --> create polymeres --> burn plastic). Recycling creates ressources in our own backyards so to speak, preventing the need for installing complicated infrastructure in remote and extreme places on our earth to get them were they are needed.
It also is way more sustainable, benefitting our well-being by protecting the environment from damage. We probably already created an unsolvable problem with nano-plastic.
@@Vulcano7965 Yes, you have to extract oil in either case: collect plastic > Extract oil to fuel the recycling process > recycle plastic to low-quality new plastic.
Let me show you how this 'recycling' works in the real world: Collecting the plastic for recycling instead of burning it with the mixes waste deprives the waste of energy. In order to incinerate the now low-energy waste, oil is sprayed on it; without this oil, it wouldn't even burn.
And if you fear nano-plastic, you have to ban plastic at all. This would lead to an immense waste of wood, fabric for packing, waste of energy (For example the very energy-intensive production of glass as a substitute) etc, immense destruction of agricultural products which we protect by packaging in plastic, waste of oil and gas because we would not insulate our homes as well without plastic foam and dozens of other disadvantages.
Plastic is SAVING gas, oil, and coal, protecting the environment by reducing the needed area for agriculture, improving our living standard and preventing over-exploitation of natural resources like forests or arable land for the production of natural fibres instead of synthetic ones and, and...
In short: get real!
@@TheSpecio We're talking about the processes mentioned in the video.
So you base your whole assumption on this: "collect plastic > Extract oil to fuel the recycling process > *recycle plastic to low-quality new plastic.* "
You don't need to ban plastic entirely to prevent further contamination of micro + nano-plastic, that's a strawman. You need to recycle the used plastic back into a production cycle so it doesn't need to be thrown in landfills. That's the whole issue this video is addressing.
It's very likely that Oil and Gas will still be around in the coming decades, although only/mostly for plastic production, since there will always some loss in the recycling process. So I'm not quite sure what you're so mad about.
Electricity generated by waste incineration makes up a tiny fraction of our energy production.
@@Vulcano7965 I am talking about intelligent and cost-effective ways of managing our plastic demands.
No one wants to throw it in landfills. I said: BURN it! Effect: No nano-plastic. And because this ist cost-effective, it's easier to enforce. Right now, plastic fuel is already profitable for the cement industry (rotary kilns, very effective for burning old tires too) and iron industry (shredded plastic is blown into blast furnaces together with combustion air, saving HUGE amounts of coal and oil)
And my whole assumption ist: You need LESS oil if you incinerate used plastic to produce energy and make new plastic out of oil. 'Recycling' plastic is a no-brainer. It doesn't have even a single advantage.
Here in Québec, we have Pyrowave and Loop Industries who developped a similar technology. They break down all plastics to their monomere form and then rebuild them into whatever they want.
Thanks a lot for your thinking! Your videos are bringing hope!
Arguably, it's not a matter of "hydrocarbons" itself, but sustainability / equilibrium that is the most helpful goal. You want some process that has zero net externalities. Making these out of elements which are less common already in our environment would make us more in peril. Then, any process, no matter how much more efficient and in creation of consumer level equilibrium, that then brings elements / compounds which are out of equilibrium to out of balance accumulations, may be problematic. So if you make a beautiful process of re-use, but it makes some cute little radio-active something as a side effect, you are not only back to square one, but may be even worse off. As a lesson, therefore, I counsel once again that our very very very first goal should be reduced use, then re-use right after that. I know you know that saw, Dave. I also realize that we may be on a point where in the next decade or so may be the last time we have the resources to come up with some of these new ideas, given the downturn that comes as the temperature goes up may be far worse than we all anticipate. Still, if we all keep this as a bias, reduce and reuse first, we are more likely to focus our activities where they mitigate problems most, and not just where Wall Street and London can most easily put their monies.
Very interesting topic and presentation. One of the critical challenges we have as a society. Thanks for the video!
Boyan Slat of Ocean Cleanup recently released some videos showing how his team turned ocean and river plastic into brand new sunglasses, and the remains of Wilson the floating system of buoys used to clean up ocean plastic to create the case.
Thanks for another great video!
When the human greed makes me dispare I have learnt to turn to this channel for a glimmer of hope. Many thanks.
You're great! I love your videos.
I have some swimming trunks made of a material called Econyl, which is recycled nylon (from fishnets and such). Feels like the quality of virgin nylon.
I love your animations, they make things so easy to understand.
Thanks for this clear presentation of these hopeful changes on the horizon. I'll share with our students and lake stewards as we address the microplastics and debris in Lake Champlain.
Please check carbios.. a firm in France that has a patent of recycling through microbes that can absorb and devolve plastics!
We are short on housing here in the UK, and in many other countries. Shouldn't it be recycled into building materials? Reduce wood use (less trees cut down), it lasts for a very long time, doesn't rust or rot, can be easily moulded to whatever shape is needed, plastic is a good insulator, and sound absorber. We have a lot, and need a lot for building materials. It's perfect. Councils don't want it, and as a building material it's free and the only cost is in processing it. There are plenty of re-uses if we only use our noodle.
Keep up the Good Work everyone !!
The creasolve process would be highly useful on site at textile factories and other similar factories that produce scrap material in the production process
This is the kind of content that is good for my kids. Hopeful of what we can and must do and not full of gloom and doom.
Great scientific progress. The creasolv solvent shouldn't be a secret. We need to make this science widely available for all countries and companies to use so we can deal with this crisis.
Agreed, but it'll never happen. They didn't even make them choose between monopoly and secrecy, they gave them _both_! That's not the logic under which patents were originally sold to society!
I'm so depressed right now.
THANKSGIVING
This makes me feel good
It's good to know what's going on behind the scenes.
This looks brilliant it’s about time someone started coming up with things like this time that will help us with this grievance problem that we have.
THIS IS NOTHING NEW, SIMILAR THINGS WERE HAPPENING FOR PAST 20 YEARS, he just tries to make it sound full of hope etc...
Excellent news! Thanks
Give me a minute, I’ll ask the missus, she reckons she knows everything! Another great video, thanks. Keep em coming.
Such a great source of information. Thank you for all your work bringing this knowledge to us. :)
Creasolv: imagine finding out that production and disposal of that solvent mixture is horrendous for the environment. Definitely not gonna happen, right... right?
The solvents used are non-hazardous
@@mousetails9 thats not the same thing. Polythene is non-hazardous.
sboooon - most solvents that can dissolve plastics are fairly harmless, especially things like ionic liquids which are classed as green solvents. Anyway it won’t be disposed of, it will be recycled continually. And if you do need to dispose of solvents then you just burn them in an incinerator fitted with scrubbers.
Some of what we need to look into is the how items are transported and distributed. Maybe things don't need to be packaged in a large plastic container. Maybe if we bring our contains to the store and filled from a bulk container or wrapped in butcher's paper for meats likes the old days.
@Just Have a Think
If you haven't already, you should make a video on Thermal Depolymerisation. It's a process that converts organic waste (and possibly hydrocarbons) into a light crude oil.
Sounds to me the cruz of the issue is that the chemical process can help with some plastics but doesn't help for all plastics, presorting that the chemistry can do its thing is important as the reaction and purity would increase. Have seen some AI object detection machines used in the industry that help with that on the line, a thought that popped into my head and I see some obvious issues, but why not detect or etch and detect a product identifier in the source (like a QR code) to assist with object detection, this also can help train the object classifier. It seems eminently doable to have electric recycling trucks, solar power/battery from either grid or on site to run the classifiers, scale up as volume is important, and convert it to high quality materials. The economic question becomes: is export of materials and this process cheaper to produce then virgin plastics to compete with (it seems like virgin plastics unless taxed will always be cheaper) or as a bare minimum are the exports capable of sustaining the business without external funding. If so then it seems like this can, in the limit, clean up all material easily reachable in the environment.
@@Jay...777 yes of course. Sensible people working together to solve common goals. I can agree with that. Big problems require more participants and resources. And we stand on the shoulders of giants, don't disagree with that either. Even my ideas aren't my own, they have been triggered by the video and other sources as well. Leave them as a gift. You can only effect your part of the stream of life, and perhaps make small waves, hopefully those waves cascade in positive patterns.
As to the original idea. It makes it easy for people in that position to create a higher quality output, it would be a decision that gets made at that specific facility, recycling makes sense, having recycling be better makes sense, selling the output that they produce out of that waste makes sense, as it's output is the raw inputs for other production chains - to produce those goods we love so very very much makes sense in that context. (Last part was a bit tongue in cheek)
If you think about recycling as a self funding cleanup program, a biological analogy would be a scavenger, it provides a useful role in cleaning up of the waste. If the scavenger can move faster/do more than the production of waste, then you end the cycle, essentially all waste, even landfill could with an efficient enough process be converted into something useful.
We have two problems in industry at the moment: companies are pushing to sell you ever more products and do this by forcing you to stop using perfectly good products: cars, phones, household white goods, and computers being some of the main culprits. On the other hand, we have governments punishing people for trying to dispose of waste. Governments should be clamping down on manufacturers to build things to last instead of built-in obsolescence.
One fact: 25% of plastic produced is thermo-setting plastic which cannot be recycled. Some products cannot be made from thermoplastic, kettles, electrical fittings, and can therefore never be recycled. We need to go back to using other materials where possible, such as wood, metal, paper, and card.
I hope this recycling process works out but a couple of things never considered, even by "greens": use less/waste less. A much more effective way of reducing electricity consumption is a change of mind by people, not making it more expensive and punishing the poor.
One of your better videos but I do get tired of hearing all the same of "Anthropogenic Climate Change" memes.
The main problem is, that selling one product that last long will not be profitable in the long run. I think then there need to be other ways around it like. If you buy a phone the phone will be expensive and you will get other subscription model types like apple does. The only problem is that they bring out a new phone every year eventho their phones can be used for 5+year with no real problems.
@@LemonsRage Thanks for the comment, that's my point. On the one hand we have stupid governments listening to "experts" (most of them are charlatans) and bringing in draconian "green" policies which generally involve higher taxes to punish us for consumption, but not addressing the real problem, the companies who keep bringing out updated products with built-in obsolescence. Then there are the fashion idiots who just have to have the latest model.
I'm doing my bit, I use an iphone 4G which still does what I need, texts and phone calls, and a third-gen Ipad (Retina) which also does what I need, mainly taking photos and video. I don't upgrade computers until I can no longer run the version of Windows. I kept my last car for 18 years and the only reason I scrapped it was because I could not afford to have it completely reqired, which is what it needed. I had driven less than 150,000 miles. I was brought up in the 1950s when everything was in short supply, and still have that mental attitude towards waste.
Have a very good day.
We should go back to the old wooden electrical outlets. I believe the British ones are made from hand-polished oak, same as their ships.
sounds great
I hope they can also take on e-waste soon.
Redwood materials
Fascinating science & potential technology. I bet the special sauce is Marmite. Keep an eye out for secretive bulk purchases of Marmite, stores sold out and whatnot.
another great bit of news..although I do hope it isn't like the TV program (tomorrows world) I used to watch on TV where I would hear about great, world-changing, technological advances every week and hardly ever hear about them again)
That's because of patents. If the first company doesn't work out all the bugs (and they probably won't) before they go out of business, the technology will sleep for 20-ish years for the patents to expire before research on solutions starts at other companies-- then, because modern patents are deliberately written to be vague and/or misleading rather than accurately describing the invention as they were originally meant to, the companies that start working on improved versions run into setback after expensive and time-consuming setback just in recreating the original version, even before they make their own improvements. Any improvements they DO make (or think a competitor might make in the near future) are immediately patented themselves, and the cycle repeats. It ends when a practical version eventually emerges after a several cycles, but goes on again between "generations" of the technology.
For many years I have thought that governments should have mandated by law [with very severe penalties for noncompliance] that the companies producing these different types of plastic [and styrofoam] must have a process in place that will either break them down or disintegrate these products before any distribution would be allowed. But, of course, governments are the primary partners of business in Market Capitalism. These negative externalities produced by capitalist markets are never the concern of business, and the cost of dealing with them always falls upon the public.
All this high tech rocket science stuff is all very well, and should be necessarily advanced. But without folding or winding back on the more mundane recycling of post-consumer plastic, particularly in relation to the high turnover consumer stuff. Because a considerable portion of post-consumer PET, for example, is in fact making its way back onto supermarket and shop shelves as new containers. It must be, because increasing numbers of beverage brands are being labelled as either 50 % or 100 % " recycled plastic " or " recycled PET ". Some of it may well be a rort and not specifically post-consumer, but most of it has to be. There are watchdogs on it. If its recycled PET then the containers are generally softer and dent easily. But they nevertheless move from the shelves and enter the commercial turnover stream. And that is the thing.
I had this idea of turning plastic waste into new plastic, when I was given project to do in high school science class. It was about making a invention that would change the world. So I came across a video on the internet about a person in a 3rd world country making diesel fuel from plastic waste by pryloisis and I wanted to make one for myself, but I wanted to modify it by turning the the plastic waste oil back into the original plastic by refining it distilling it back into a refined crude oil that you can use to make new plastic polymers. I haven't made it yet. What do you think about that idea?
Nice work
You are guineas sir you are my hero I love you so much sir your ideas so useful 😃
The "can't be bothered pile?" You mean plastics with #7 on the bottom?
Where I live its anything that's not 1 or 2 plastic.
No, landfill or incineration.
Environmental costs should be mandatorily worked into the price of all objects. Including the pollutants during mining resources, production, shipping, warehousing, etc. The true cost of an item includes cleaning up the mess that product makes of the environment.
This is the only alternate dim where its not frauding us reusing the same plastic. Whatever 70 years of jar subjective designs has led us to .. not even design...
Good vid. We need to focus on and dramatically reduce personal purchases of food and drink that comes in plastic containers. It might appear to be convenient for the consumer, but are we destroying our ecosystems for mere convenience? This is clearly the case. We must all address this personal consumption of plastic issue. Convenience before common sense?
Great news! Combine efforts to recycle plastics with 3d printing from the Internet Of Things to provide low cost items of all kinds. Put the printers in communities around town, supply them from the local recycling plant and let folks order things from the IOC, to be printed and either picked up (or shipped, if needed). Costs would be minimal and the economic impact could be enormous.
Check out the guys in asia that are making brooms out of scrap plastic bottles, very little machinery used.
What do we need to do to put Dave in charge of the world?
Can u please have a think on bio plastics and biofuels to underline their potential?
What you greatly exposed is the solution for a problem that we already have.
Part of the problem, by my point of view, can be solved only by a serious re-engineering of the whole product chain, adopting a new class of materials that can do the job without a particular change in production technology and machinery, to make it economically sustainable.
I can give a hint on what I personally work on: PET to PEF transition
By the way, thank u so much for your very interesting divulgatio work!
What a fantastic thing, to be really able to utilize all this trash plastic and (hopefully) not make any virgin plastic, eventually working in some other and better solution entirely. Maybe could use that ocean trash as well? Love this channel, contains some great thinking. :-) The US would have a problem with this one though, as the mega-corporations would resist it.
There are micro organisms discovered that actually 'eat' certain types of plastics.
This should be developed and used for things such as the "Great Pacific garbage patch"
That's excellent news. Good to know 100% recycling is possible and being done.
Thanks for the insights on Renewable energy production and now recycling. There is a large shift away from destruction of the earth under way. Not of human construct, we all know money rules currently. Soon that will change, I hope I can count on those who are truly concerned for the dying environment to be ready to hit the ground running! Large scale protection and rehabilitation will soon be what we (Humans) do. Keep up the good work Just have a think guy! The rest of you keep studying and be ready for sudden change!
My idea would be to modify bacteria that can break it down, bioengineer it to not only break it down but to produce fresh hydrocarbon chains from it, the end goal could even be to have to organism use photosynthesis to power itself
We currently have the ability/technology to reduce plastic, paper, wood, sewage, animal guts, skins, eyeballs, or any other organic waste, (which is most of our garbage,) into oil and then to create plastic and/or fuel. The energy is available in the form of solar, geothermal and nuclear, molten salt reactors.
Something I'm wondering is since sorting the plastics prior to reprocessing is one of the big issues of recycling, I'm wondering if some processes proposed here, such as the CreoSolv process, can at least address the sorting issue by selectively dissolving the targeted polymer chains, then allowing the same feed stock to be reprocessed to target another polymer. I would also like to see some attention focused on thermal management of these processes (possibly like refrigeration to condense the distillate solvent being deposited back into the boiler vessel,) and the resulting energy comparison.
Sounds like a good place to spend some R&D funds.
Personally I like the plastics to pavement initiative as well as the plastic to diesel plants that are catching on more and more. Incineration is the best simple solution after recycling, but as we know China no longer wants to deal with our waste so we ought to. Sweden and Japan have great incineration plants that deserve more attention
Low cost plastic from high cost recycling. Plus the facts of oil distillation, puts doubts on the viability of these efforts. Maybe will be viable when fusion power gets here.
I've tried to find information on the energy requirements for their tech but all I managed to find in their site was this quote
"As energy use is the primary contributor to the impact, the main recommendation drawn at this stage is to improve the energy efficiency of the process."
They're playing their cards close to their chest on this one at this stage so I can only speculate but I'm going to do exactly that!
*This will still be an extremely energy intensive process* The solvents in the process will be energy intensive to produce, the optimal temperature for catalysis will be high, the distillation process with require massive heat energy input, the drying of the product will require energy and the extruding of the polymers into pellets will be about the only low energy stage.
This is all dictated by the laws of thermodynamics.
Technologies like this are crucial, I don't need to explain why single use plastic is bad, and therefore energy is even more crucial; both electrical energy and HEAT energy (which is probably the main energy input for this whole process)
SO...
What energy generation technology has a low environmental footprint and could reliably power such a process 24/7 both with electricity and with heat?
*Nuclear*
Recycling is one of the examples I use to explain why "degrowth" (particularly of energy- sometimes in the form of unreliables) is a recipe for disaster.
Other than recycling, the expansion of nuclear energy will be paramount for:
-Sea water desalination
-Hydrogen production
-Synthetic hydrocarbon production
-Carbon capture and storage
-Displacing fossil fuels without destroying the environment
-And many more
If you think recycling or anything else on that list is important you should support nuclear!
But wasn't the intial problem sorting the diffrent types of plastics? From what I get creasolv can extrakt the polymerchains out of one type of plastic but you still need to sort it first. In 3:25 you say that separating them is expensive and time consuming.
very exciting. please keep us updated with the companies' 'progress!
Pyrolysis of plastics is also an emerging process that was first developed 20 years ago, turning it into fuel.
Why a complicated and energy-consuming pyrolysis to make fuel and then burn the fuel instead of burning the plastic itself? The latter is simpler, cheaper and more effective!
I like our Australian developed process which breaks down waste plastics with heat, steam and pressure into a recyclable plastic liquid. It only remains to be seen if anyone is interested in paying enough to make actual recycling of plastics economic rather than mythological.
What about plasma gasification plants? The only waste is plasma rock. They atomize everything you put in it and then you can separate the gases and use some to fuel an engine that creates electricity. It's even energy positive.
So it's an everything recycler + a powerplant.
thank you for yet another interesting video.
Can i just ask if you have been adjusting your microphone recently? I'm hearing the inhale between each sentence, and even tiny tiny ghasps for each comma.
It's just Mister Think's been advised to increase the drama, get closer to matching the dramatic music backgrounds of climate videos from both opposing teams. Like the starvation & Death of Little Ice Age, The Horror ! THE HORROR !
Could we insist that all the films are compostable , and that all other plastics are separated from other rubbish , and cleaned , and then landfill that to be remined,and reprocessed at a later date ? Rather than waiting for 20 years for the perfect system ....
Hi there the plastic problem is not a problem firstly as an plastic process technologist plastic can be recycled so 30 percent can be introduced back into the virgin processing only at 10 percent because polymers change their micro crystalline another words ultraviolet radiation and acids change its basically properties. The recycling is labour intensive and is not cheap unless you get free labour by using the unemployed, a Canadian Ukrainian in Toronto developed a pyrololygis of turning plastic waste back plax crude but now it is expensive to do so waste to energy is another way of controlling waste .
I think plastic is one of those huge ecological crises that is just too overwhelming for most people to affectively reduce on their own. I love to see new technological solutions, but lasting change is going to require strong government and industry cooperation and public education campaigns to reach a sustainable balance.