6 ms·

New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

100 points by chmaynard 10y ago

martalist 10y ago
> "Only 2 percent of the 78 million tons of manufactured plastics are currently recycled" Is there any info/stats on what happens to the rest?
- xbmcuser 10y ago
  What happens to the rest is mentioned in the article as well.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    From the article: 2% recycled 33% lost 40% landfil 14% incinerated 89% total? I don't know what happens to the rest.
    - umbrai_nation 10y ago
      11% still in use?
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      It's stuck in abandoned homes or under crawlspaces?
- Tepix 10y ago
  "Sadly, nearly a third is leaked into the environment, around 14 percent is used in incineration and/or energy recovery, and a whopping 40 percent winds up in landfills." It's in the second paragaph.
andreofthecape 10y ago
Is the resultant polymer recyclable?
jlebrech 10y ago
by definition plastics are recycled crude oil, they'd only end up burned if not turned into plastic. the way we recycle is still broken, we separate it from our garbage thinking it'll be recycled but it's still burned.
spodek 10y ago
For our personal behavior, let's remember than reducing consumption reduces pollution more than reusing, which reduces pollution more than recycling. By the time you're relying on recycling, you've already polluted a lot more than you needed to, all the more so at the poor efficiency the article reports. If you don't create the plastic bottle you don't have to figure out how to undo its pollution. We probably can't avoid all plastic use, but we're orders of magnitude above minimal use, considering plastic didn't exist for most of human history, and most current use doesn't improve anyone's quality of life.
- 24gttghh 10y ago
  From the final paragraph of the article: "If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it." In effect this could help to reduce consumption as you suggest (and as I agree).
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    The milk jug is so light and thin already, any more improvement is lost in the noise. Consume (waste) less milk, you're doing an order of magnitude more good.
    - byronwall 10y ago
      Millions of pounds of plastic are made every year for milk jugs. A 30% improvement would not be lost in the noise.
      - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        Lost in the noise of producing milk. There is an astronomical amount of environmental resources to get to the point of filling the jug. Just wasting less milk (buy only what you can use to avoid dumping what has gone bad) would blow 'lighter milk jug' out of the water by many orders of magnitude. And using 30% fewer jugs saves 30% right out of the gate.
byronwall 10y ago
> ""What's exciting about this," he said, "is we can go to as low as 1 percent of our additive, and you get a plastic alloy that really has super-great properties."" The properties of a polymer are specific to the application intended. "Super-great" doesn't appear on a spec sheet [0]. If you're making plastic for high pressure natural gas pipe, you go with a polymer that is different from a film resin. Plastic producers work closely with the end users to craft polymer that matches very specific applications. It's possible that this additive can be crafted for different applications, but combining polyethylene and polypropylene is already starting from different beasts. In the world of polyethylene, I previously worked at a plant that made ~50 different grades/resins ranging from low to medium to high density PE for wildly different applications (pipe, blow molding, film, etc.). Of those 50 resins, they were made from 2 different catalyst systems and multiple actual catalysts. All of our end product was nominally "polyethylene". That detail worked to ensure you made exactly the polymer you wanted for the application. It is this specification of properties that prevents recycled material from ending up in the critical high volume applications. If you're making millions of milk jugs a day, it doesn't matter that a single milk jug is worthless. You're using machinery that is custom tuned to the polymer you are running. That tuning relies on the polymer having specific, repeatable properties. We had customers complain when an identical resin was made from different plants at the complex. > ""If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it."" Plastic producers can already make stronger polymer that requires less material. Presumably the milk jug folks don't want to pay the premium for it. The same is true of this additive. What does it cost? It's the reason we don't make everything metal out of titanium. [0] http://www.cpchem.com/bl/polyethylene/en-us/tdslibrary/Marlex%20D143%20Polyethylene.pdf http://www.cpchem.com/bl/polyethylene/en-us/tdslibrary/Marle...
OliverJones 10y ago
I wish I could ask the chemists this question: How does your innovation fare when it ends up, in large quantities, in one of the oceanic plastic gyres? Is it better / worse / the same than the equivalent mass of polypropylene or polyethylene? I'm asking specifically about longevity and environmental impact both of the new "alloy" itself and its degradation products.
anexprogrammer 10y ago
We're still asking the wrong question. The frustrating thing is we were doing miles better in the 80s, even though to be evironmentally aware then meant you were thought of as some sort of hippie or anarchist type. Lots of supermarkets still sold milk in glass bottles as used by milkmen. You returned the empties to the store/milkman and they could be reused indefinitely. Milkmen delivering to door were still common. A couple of supermarkets had bio-degradeable carrier bags that were just as good as plastic, they just had a slightly different (nicer tbh) texture. They had mysteriously disppeared by the 90s, so presumably cost a fraction more. Most products had yet to succumb to the insanity of plastic and packaging. Lots of pop (soda) came in glass bottles or cans, just a few preferred plastic. Sealed packs of 3 slices of ham or one apple were still in some dystopian future. Paper, card and greaseproof paper were still common packaging. A typical family would get nowhere near the amount of waste an average family generates in these "environmentally aware" times.
- Pamar 10y ago
  In Germany water bottles have an automatic markup of 25 eurocents/bottle. Every supermarket has special devices that will scan the bottle barcode and give you back 25 cents for each compatible bottle you put in - the money is delivered as a coupon you can use at the cashier to pay for stuff (you can also ask for cash if you want).
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    Sometime in the 80s or 90s there was interest in introducing the same as plastic was starting to be used for more bottles. From memory it was very popular with the public at the time. Nothing ever came of it, so presumably the Thatcher govt considered it an unfair imposition on businesses. So now we have towns and hedgerows full of discarded plastic bottles.
  - oriolid 10y ago
    Finland has the same system. A nice side effect is that since the bottles are supposed to be reusable, they are thick and sturdy plastic instead of the paper thin disposable ones.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Nice work, I hope they can commercialize it. One of the challenges I discovered about plastic recycling is that you can't easily separate plastics and people do a lousy job of it. With aluminum cans (70% recycled[1]) you can use ferrous metal screening to separate and a lot of other impurities burn off when smelting it. But with plastics if you mix two incompatible types (polypropylene and polyethylene) the result is a crappy plastic that is brittle and weak. And there is no simple way of splitting them apart when they are mixed together. As a result it is really hard to get nice clean recycle plastic of a single 'type' and that limits its uses tremendously. The ideal solution would be to be able to mix some magic mojo into a plastic and turn it into the finished product (which is what these scientists propose AFAICT). [1] http://www.aluminum.org/news/study-finds-aluminum-cans-sustainable-package-choice http://www.aluminum.org/news/study-finds-aluminum-cans-susta...

100 points by chmaynard 10y ago

> "Only 2 percent of the 78 million tons of manufactured plastics are currently recycled" Is there any info/stats on what happens to the rest?

xbmcuser 10y ago
What happens to the rest is mentioned in the article as well.
- DanBC 10y ago
  From the article: 2% recycled 33% lost 40% landfil 14% incinerated 89% total? I don't know what happens to the rest.
  - umbrai_nation 10y ago
    11% still in use?
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    It's stuck in abandoned homes or under crawlspaces?
Tepix 10y ago
"Sadly, nearly a third is leaked into the environment, around 14 percent is used in incineration and/or energy recovery, and a whopping 40 percent winds up in landfills." It's in the second paragaph.

andreofthecape 10y ago

Is the resultant polymer recyclable?

jlebrech 10y ago

by definition plastics are recycled crude oil, they'd only end up burned if not turned into plastic. the way we recycle is still broken, we separate it from our garbage thinking it'll be recycled but it's still burned.

spodek 10y ago

For our personal behavior, let's remember than reducing consumption reduces pollution more than reusing, which reduces pollution more than recycling. By the time you're relying on recycling, you've already polluted a lot more than you needed to, all the more so at the poor efficiency the article reports. If you don't create the plastic bottle you don't have to figure out how to undo its pollution. We probably can't avoid all plastic use, but we're orders of magnitude above minimal use, considering plastic didn't exist for most of human history, and most current use doesn't improve anyone's quality of life.

24gttghh 10y ago
From the final paragraph of the article: "If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it." In effect this could help to reduce consumption as you suggest (and as I agree).
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  The milk jug is so light and thin already, any more improvement is lost in the noise. Consume (waste) less milk, you're doing an order of magnitude more good.
  - byronwall 10y ago
    Millions of pounds of plastic are made every year for milk jugs. A 30% improvement would not be lost in the noise.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Lost in the noise of producing milk. There is an astronomical amount of environmental resources to get to the point of filling the jug. Just wasting less milk (buy only what you can use to avoid dumping what has gone bad) would blow 'lighter milk jug' out of the water by many orders of magnitude. And using 30% fewer jugs saves 30% right out of the gate.

byronwall 10y ago

> ""What's exciting about this," he said, "is we can go to as low as 1 percent of our additive, and you get a plastic alloy that really has super-great properties."" The properties of a polymer are specific to the application intended. "Super-great" doesn't appear on a spec sheet [0]. If you're making plastic for high pressure natural gas pipe, you go with a polymer that is different from a film resin. Plastic producers work closely with the end users to craft polymer that matches very specific applications. It's possible that this additive can be crafted for different applications, but combining polyethylene and polypropylene is already starting from different beasts. In the world of polyethylene, I previously worked at a plant that made ~50 different grades/resins ranging from low to medium to high density PE for wildly different applications (pipe, blow molding, film, etc.). Of those 50 resins, they were made from 2 different catalyst systems and multiple actual catalysts. All of our end product was nominally "polyethylene". That detail worked to ensure you made exactly the polymer you wanted for the application. It is this specification of properties that prevents recycled material from ending up in the critical high volume applications. If you're making millions of milk jugs a day, it doesn't matter that a single milk jug is worthless. You're using machinery that is custom tuned to the polymer you are running. That tuning relies on the polymer having specific, repeatable properties. We had customers complain when an identical resin was made from different plants at the complex. > ""If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it."" Plastic producers can already make stronger polymer that requires less material. Presumably the milk jug folks don't want to pay the premium for it. The same is true of this additive. What does it cost? It's the reason we don't make everything metal out of titanium. [0] http://www.cpchem.com/bl/polyethylene/en-us/tdslibrary/Marlex%20D143%20Polyethylene.pdf http://www.cpchem.com/bl/polyethylene/en-us/tdslibrary/Marle...

OliverJones 10y ago

I wish I could ask the chemists this question: How does your innovation fare when it ends up, in large quantities, in one of the oceanic plastic gyres? Is it better / worse / the same than the equivalent mass of polypropylene or polyethylene? I'm asking specifically about longevity and environmental impact both of the new "alloy" itself and its degradation products.

anexprogrammer 10y ago

We're still asking the wrong question. The frustrating thing is we were doing miles better in the 80s, even though to be evironmentally aware then meant you were thought of as some sort of hippie or anarchist type. Lots of supermarkets still sold milk in glass bottles as used by milkmen. You returned the empties to the store/milkman and they could be reused indefinitely. Milkmen delivering to door were still common. A couple of supermarkets had bio-degradeable carrier bags that were just as good as plastic, they just had a slightly different (nicer tbh) texture. They had mysteriously disppeared by the 90s, so presumably cost a fraction more. Most products had yet to succumb to the insanity of plastic and packaging. Lots of pop (soda) came in glass bottles or cans, just a few preferred plastic. Sealed packs of 3 slices of ham or one apple were still in some dystopian future. Paper, card and greaseproof paper were still common packaging. A typical family would get nowhere near the amount of waste an average family generates in these "environmentally aware" times.

Pamar 10y ago
In Germany water bottles have an automatic markup of 25 eurocents/bottle. Every supermarket has special devices that will scan the bottle barcode and give you back 25 cents for each compatible bottle you put in - the money is delivered as a coupon you can use at the cashier to pay for stuff (you can also ask for cash if you want).
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  Sometime in the 80s or 90s there was interest in introducing the same as plastic was starting to be used for more bottles. From memory it was very popular with the public at the time. Nothing ever came of it, so presumably the Thatcher govt considered it an unfair imposition on businesses. So now we have towns and hedgerows full of discarded plastic bottles.
- oriolid 10y ago
  Finland has the same system. A nice side effect is that since the bottles are supposed to be reusable, they are thick and sturdy plastic instead of the paper thin disposable ones.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Nice work, I hope they can commercialize it. One of the challenges I discovered about plastic recycling is that you can't easily separate plastics and people do a lousy job of it. With aluminum cans (70% recycled[1]) you can use ferrous metal screening to separate and a lot of other impurities burn off when smelting it. But with plastics if you mix two incompatible types (polypropylene and polyethylene) the result is a crappy plastic that is brittle and weak. And there is no simple way of splitting them apart when they are mixed together. As a result it is really hard to get nice clean recycle plastic of a single 'type' and that limits its uses tremendously. The ideal solution would be to be able to mix some magic mojo into a plastic and turn it into the finished product (which is what these scientists propose AFAICT). [1] http://www.aluminum.org/news/study-finds-aluminum-cans-sustainable-package-choice http://www.aluminum.org/news/study-finds-aluminum-cans-susta...