“...as long as it’s got a high percentage of polypropylene , we’ll be able to clean it up,” says the CEO of PureCycle Technologies, as reported by Emily Chassen for Bloomberg Week. about a new company deploying a new process on commercial scale since July
at its $300 million plant in Hanging Rock, Ohio, where it expects to be able to process 119 million pounds of plastic waste a year.
PureCycle has signed contracts with P&G, Milliken, Nestlé, and L’Oreal to produce the plastic and has presold more than 20 years of output from its first plant. PureCycle says it hopes to expand to other cities in the U.S. and Europe in the next few years.
About 20 percent of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) —commonly used to make plastic bottles and other consumer goods— gets recycled. But about 97% of used polypropylene (PP) has ended up part of the 25 million tons of plastics a year The Guardian found going into American landfills.
Because existing reprocessing tech couldn’t overcome two major obstacles: ugly combo odors & ugly muddy greyblack look of the ‘new’ resin feedstock — qualities consumers do not associate with cleanliness or health. And shouldn’t — there were contaminants that presented “regulatory concerns”.
Breakthrough polymer chemist John Layman at P&G put in a decade cracking the problem while the 3% that was recycled —expensively cleansed of odor— went on since the 1970s being hidden inside park benches and auto parts, and sandwiched between layers of bottles holding laundry detergent, motor oil, and like that.
At best, that technique brings the amount of recycled material in a bottle to about 25%, and it doesn’t work if you’re trying to make a product in an injection mold—like a toothbrush.
Around 2010, Layman’s R&D team began to make headway on a purification process
at the molecular level to produce clear, odorless, nontoxic pellets that can be used to make a 100% recycled [product]. The system requires only about one-seventh of the energy used to make virgin polypropylene.
P&G leased the process to the company now called PureCycle Technologies, and is one of four heavy hitters contracting with PureCycle —Nestlé (world’s leading foods & beverages biz), L’Oreal (personal products & cosmetics), and Milliken (diversified manufacturing in specialty chemicals, floor-covering, “performance and protective textiles”, and healthcare) to produce and use this plastic.
The company has found a way to run almost any product made with polypropylene through the process, so it can use materials most traditional waste haulers won’t attempt to recycle. It’s run broken hangers, old carpets, and even a disposable diaper through the cleaning process in trials to test how it works with hard-to-recycle products, and found it still produces pristine, clear plastic. The company is focusing on recycling carpets for now. “Part of the reason this waste hasn’t been collected before is because there weren’t consistent acquirers of that waste stream,” says CEO Mike Otworth. “We hope to change that...”
How clean and low-carbon-footprint is Layman’s PureCycle process? Hard to say. Some vague conclusions might be drawn at LinkedIn, they’ve got 52 applicants for a PureCycle job posted two weeks ago, with this “Role Overview” for a plant that appears to employ a total staff of about 60 at a former Dow Chemical plant:
The Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) Manager position develops and implements PureCycle Technologies’(which include company level, the Feedstock Evaluation Unit (FEU), and future commercial plants) environmental health and safety processes and policies in accordance with company, industry, and governmental standards. This role also recommends and implements improvements to environmental health and safety processes, coordinates with engineering and operations team to eliminate and/or control hazardous conditions resulting from human error, equipment and machine operations that may lead to human injury, environmental excursion, and/or property damage.
Will it make manufacturing of conventional products (e.g., containers, computer casings, toys, office & household goods) from the reprocessed feedstock any cleaner or smaller-carbon-footprint than it has been? Well, aside from their saying their system “requires only about one-seventh of the energy used to make virgin polypropylene,” that’s not clear either, and I’m finding that kind of information elusive, aside from statements like Nestlé’s from Vevey, Switzerland, on Jan 15, 2019:
Nestlé today laid out its broader vision to achieve a waste-free future and announced a series of specific actions towards meeting its April 2018 commitment to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025, with a particular focus on avoiding plastic-waste.
Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider said, "Our broader vision and action plan outline our commitment and specific approach to addressing the plastics packaging waste issue.
While we are committed to pursuing recycling options where feasible, we know that 100% recyclability is not enough to successfully tackle the plastics waste crisis. We need to push the boundaries and do more. We are determined to look at every option to solve this complex challenge and embrace multiple solutions that can have an impact now. We believe in the value of recyclable and compostable paper-based materials and biodegradable polymers, in particular where recycling infrastructure does not exist.
Collective action is vital, which is why we are also engaging consumers, business partners and all of our Nestlé colleagues to play their part.
You can count on us to be a leader in this space!"
.... In line with this approach, Nestlé today announced tangible steps to pioneer alternative materials, shape a waste-free future and drive behavior change [such as] Between 2020 and 2025, Nestlé will phase out all plastics that are not recyclable or are hard to recycle for all its products worldwide (pdf, 50 Kb). In doing so, Nestlé is rolling out alternative packaging materials across its global product portfolio and establishing partnerships with cutting-edge packaging specialists...
As long as we’re talking about Nestlé’, their specifics can be read at the Vervay link (above the blockquote). One particularly encouraging element:
Plastic waste in the ocean poses a particular threat to Indonesia as well as other Southeast Asian countries. Nestlé has therefore become the first food company to partner with Project STOP, [stopoceanplastics.com] which was launched in Indonesia in 2017. Project STOP is a leading initiative to prevent the leakage of plastic into the ocean by developing partnerships with cities and governments in Southeast Asia. Project STOP is creating sustainable, circular and low-cost waste systems that capture as much value from waste as possible. It supports the many existing local initiatives and informal waste pickers in Indonesia’s coastal areas. Over the coming months, we will take the learnings from this project to other countries where we operate in an effort to deliver ‘plastic neutrality’ in those markets. Nestlé will provide more details at the appropriate time.
There are some interesting photographs of the PureCycle plant machinery and the resin-pellet product made there (click on the very first link up top). The last photo of the article shows bales looking a bit like these, said to be old carpet poised for transformation at PureCycle. If they can do it with old carpet, maybe then with a lot of other waste. Here’s hoping.