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- What is Chemical Recycling?
- Chemical Recycling Companies
- Chemical Recycling Consortiums, Partnerships and Joint-Ventures (News articles)
- Mechanical vs Chemical Recycling
- Chemical Recycling Consortiums, Partnerships and Joint-Ventures (List of companies)
What is the difference between mechanical-, chemical-, advanced- and bio recycling?
Mechanical recycling involves a mechanic process: you clean the plastic waste and you shred it with a shedder. You keep the molecular structure of the polymer (polymer is the scientific name of plastic). Mechanical recycling is a physical process.
Chemical recycling is a chemical process: you use solvents, acids and temperature to break down the molecular structure of the plastic waste. Let me rephrase this with vulgar scienctific words: you break down the polymer into monomers.
Advanced recycling is a greenwashing term used to replace the word ‘chemical’: the word chemical has a bad connotation for the citizens.
Plastic Recycling
- Chemical and Advanced recycling
Mechanical vs Chemical Recycling
Chemical Recycling uses acids and solvents to degrade plastic waste.
The word ‘advanced recycling’ has been used by the industry in recent years as a replacement for the term ‘chemical recycling’ because the word ‘chemical’ has a bad connotation in the public sphere. In other words: ‘chemical’ is not really a word that fits into the ‘sustainability’ and ‘circularity’ storytelling.
Chemical recycling is not a new process as it has been developed for more than 20 years; for instance pyrolysis. It’s not yet mainstream and it’s still in an experimental and development phase. It’s believed that chemical recycling may be an answer to the plastic waste that cannot be recycled mechanically. Today, only PET bottles and PVC window frames have been said to be recycled at industrial scale.
There is a lot of hope placed on chemical recycling, however there are also many doubts regarding the technical, economic and ecological soundness of chemical recycling.
In the eyes of the industry, advanced recycling means: chemical recycling + enzymatic recycling.
In my eyes, chemical recycling is chemical recycling; and it should not be referred to as advanced recycling.
- Advanced, enzymatic and biological recycling
In my eyes, advanced recycling is just enzymatic recycling.
Many companies will use the word advanced recycling to refer to chemical recycling because the word chemical has a bad reputation.
The word biological recycling is also used as a synonym for enzymatic recycling. However, the compostable plastics industry is also using the term biological recycling to refer to the composting of plastic which works on the principle of bacterial digestion of plastic.
In other words: for some companies biological recycling only means enzymatic recycling, for other companies biological recycling also includes “composting”.
In my eyes, advanced recycling means enzymatic recycling plus other new processes that may be developed in the future and that do not fall under the term chemical recycling (for instance laser recycling).
- Biological and Organic recycling
In my eyes, biological recycling is a synonym for enzymatic recycling.
Some compostable plastic industry will use the term biological recycling to describe composting of plastics. Some companies will use the term organic recycling to describe the composting of plastics.
Final remarks
It’s all about marketing and money.
The public was told for the last 35 years that plastic was recycled mechanically. In fact it was sent to China and no questions were asked as to what happened with it.
On the first of January 2018, China stopped the imports of plastics waste from Western countries. China, by doing so, opened up the Pandora box and the ‘plastic waste’ hit the fan. This created a crisis in Plastic land and plastic became suddenly a problem in the eyes of the consumers. To be honest with you … it wasn’t the first ‘plastic’ existential crisis … plastic has been in the line of fire for the last 40 years.
The industry tried to turn the winds around by creating a “black hat / white rabbit” distraction: A whole series of plastic recycling innovations were promoted as chemical and advanced recycling.
To make a long story short: these so-called ‘miracle’ solutions work in labs but not under real life conditions.
Another distraction was created: the circular economy. Chemical & advanced recycling and the circular economy were created to distract from the plastic waste problem.
Do not under estimate the value of public grants that keeps a big chunk of the industry afloat. Many ‘plastics’ NGOs, R&D centers, startups, companies, etc. get a piece of the taxpayer money cake.
The circular economic model is a new term for something that has been around for many years: (1) the valorisation and thus the monetisation of byproducts generated during the manufacturing processes, (2) the creation of a new industrial layer or web that depends on legislations and public fundings instead of free market mechanisms. This is where the Americans are smarter than the Europeans: Americans circulate private funds more easily than Europeans.
The industry was able to convince decision makers that plastic waste could be valorized … because they saw it as a lucrative business opportunity. The industry is currently receiving a lot of subsidies by Western governments to develop new recycling processes to deal with plastic waste.
The circular economic storytelling wants you to believe that all waste can be recycled.
It’s not completely correct: byproducts can be valorized but waste cannot. Well, except of course if you consider the profits made by the companies responsible for incineration or landfilling of plastic waste; but that’s non-circular as the plastic waste is destroyed or removed from the economic / industrial process.
Circularity has its limits and plastic waste may well be an insurmountable barrier …. the bottom line. To some extend we have to accept that our way of life is generating waste … not only byproducts.
Plastic waste may well be the achilles heel of our economic (consumerism) model.