Plastic isn’t all bad: the push is on to turn it into other products
It used to be about finding alternative materials, but now the focus is on recycling plastic for other uses
When Licella co-founder Len Humphreys is asked how Australia can become plastic neutral, he doesn’t talk about responsible consumption or boons across the ocean. He talks numbers. “It would take 28 plants,” he says, “and we know where they should be sited.”
Humphreys is talking about the catalytic hydrothermal reactor he invented with company co-founder Thomas Maschmeyer that turns waste plastics into fuels, waxes, lubricants, solvents and new plastics. This is no moon shot. Licella already has a pilot plant on NSW’s central coast, the first commercial plant is underway in Britain and, at this month’s National Plastics Summit, its subsidiary, iQRenew, signed up with Nestle to collect and recycle soft plastics from kerbsides for recycling.
According to Licella’s figures, 1.5 million Australians create 20,000 tonnes of plastic that could be converted in 28 plants. Those plants would cost $30m each to build and would repay that investment in 2.5 years. Moreover, if all the output of those plants were made into fuel, it would account for 12 per cent of the 92 million barrels of oil a day that Australians use. It’s no surprise that Humphreys can boast: “We’re globally famous in this sector — ask any oil company, we’re talking to them all.”
In the evolution of the plastics problem there are two moments that galvanised action. The first was the discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a watery dump of plastics the size of Queensland. The second was the decision by China and other Asian countries to stop taking recyclable waste from other countries — a move that threw responsibility for waste back on the countries of creation.
Pressure also is coming from consumers. The same consumers who choose foods based on ethical processes are demanding ethical sourcing of products, including the responsibility of choosing sustainable materials and, increasingly, having a higher component of recycled material in products.
Australia suddenly had a 100 million tonne waste problem, much of it plastics that are durable and ubiquitous. Since plastics were first manufactured, six billion tonnes of them have been produced and 91 per cent remains in water, land and air. That’s 150 years of pollution.
To date, much of the clean-up focus has been finding alternatives to plastic. Start-ups around the world are testing packaging made from compostable materials made from agricultural by-products, food waste or timber by-products. But solutions increasingly are focused on treating plastic waste as a resource for reinvention. As Humphreys says: “There’s nothing wrong with plastic, it’s a great product; the problem is how we think of it.”
Treating plastic as a reusable resource rather than a waste product pitches it into the emerging circular economy. And according to Damien Giurco, director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, “it’s an acknowledgment that we are living on one planet and there’s nowhere for waste to hide”.
Giurco says every generation of business needs to address the whole-of-life of their products and recognise this as not only a responsibility but also an opportunity. “Right now there are pockets of champions in different sectors, but it’s starting to edge closer to the mainstream.”
Much of the push for solutions is coming from governments that traditionally have been responsible for taking our garbage out. As their costs mount, they want innovative businesses to take the costs and opportunities of waste off their plates.
“Recycling is not the gold-plated solution or even the ideal solution”
Governments now are promoting the use of recycled material in their procurement processes and, at the plastics summit, Scott Morrison announced that government bodies would have to consider recycled materials in their procurement contracts.
Pressure also is coming from consumers. The same consumers who choose foods based on ethical processes are demanding ethical sourcing of products, including the responsibility of choosing sustainable materials and, increasingly, having a higher component of recycled material in products.
“Recycling is not the gold-plated solution or even the ideal solution. We should be designing for longer life and reusing. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking we can continue to consume unconsciously with the assurance that it can all be recycled.”
As governments and consumers focus on whole-of-life processes, companies are being forced to examine their role in creating products that become waste. As Humphreys says: “The traditional business model is dated. For example, in forestry management, they thought of themselves as producing pulp and paper and that was the end of it. But those processes waste up to 60 per cent of production and that’s where we come in and add value to the material they don’t use and make higher-value products from it.” (Licella also makes bio refineries for pulp.)
With warnings that oceans could contain more plastics than fish by 2050, innovations are coming from multinationals and start-ups. One young hero, Boyan Slat, gained international attention with his invention of a boon to clean up the Pacific plastic dump. It hasn’t worked in the ocean but tests of boons for rivers have been more successful.
In Australia, there is an increasingly dynamic start-up space for solving pollution problems and in February an accelerator for circular economy start-ups was set up in Sydney by Boomerang Labs.
But the biggest accelerator may be a change in mindset. Already consumers and institutions are striving to reduce consumption, but they’re also realising they can consume stuff that has been around before, perhaps multiple times.
But there is a proviso. Says Giurco: “Recycling is not the gold-plated solution or even the ideal solution. We should be designing for longer life and reusing. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking we can continue to consume unconsciously with the assurance that it can all be recycled.”