The fire burning, the banjo playing, the stories, and the sweet aromatic smell of grains; there might not be anything more Americana than the moonshiner, risking it all to provide their families some money and the rest of the community some entertainment – all while fighting with the government. Now, we see a modern moonshiner that is caught in a legal grey area, and while their product isn’t quite as exciting as a pint of white lighting, advanced recyclers are trying to produce something that we can all use – plastic – while also helping the environment. Seems like a win-win. However, with the current labyrinth of local, state, and federal regulations there is a question of how to define the output of these recycling plants.
Today, there are a lot of ways in which recycling doesn’t make sense. Currently, the environmental benefit is questionable, the usefulness is questionable, the business case doesn’t exist, and the percentage of products actually recycled is abysmal. But, the neat thing about advanced recyclers is that they make the business case for recycling by basically creating a new endless supply of materials. And, because almost all plastics are recyclable by these plants the percentage of recycled products can dramatically increase. Lastly, the environmental impact is negligible compared to other recycling techniques, almost non-existent when compared to storing trash in a landfill, and comparable to other low-emitting industries.
Environmental policies have always been questionable because they don’t create the right incentives. The policies don’t provide a way for companies to make higher profits or lower costs, and they actually go the other way – meaning that these policies make both the economy and our lives worse off in exchange for questionable results. However, by creating a business case for recycling these advanced recycling centers solve the incentive problem.
One of the primary issues with recycling is that it doesn’t work for everything. In fact, only 9% of plastics are actually recycled and for the plastics that aren’t recycled the end of life journey can best be described as long and arduous. But, there is a solution. Advanced recycling plants exist and the technology is pretty amazing.
“Researchers estimate these processes will not only revolutionize plastics recycling, but could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the conventional production of these industrial chemicals by roughly 60 percent. “
Basically, these advanced recyclers are modern distillers. Distillers create a mash, recyclers gather materials. Distillers heat up that mash, recyclers heat up the materials. Distillers then separate the alcohol from the mash, leveraging the difference in chemical properties, and advanced recyclers separate their materials leveraging the same principles.
The process is amazingly simple and increases the amount of recyclable plastics dramatically.
The problem is that the industry is so regulated that there is no assurance that what these advanced recyclers can do is even legal. For one, the process also looks very close to trash incineration – so there is a question of whether the extracted product is plastic or trash. Of course, this a problem that the moonshiners solved – just take a drink. With recyclers the problem is easily solved by seeing whether they can create plastic products (hint: they can). Of course, there are almost always questions when progress happens, so others are sure to arise as well. All this means that the industry needs clarification before they can start investing. It seems like a commonsense place for government to come in and clear up the regulations.
Like moonshiners dreaming of their profits after they make their run, plastic manufacturers are dreaming of a world where instead of throwing money at a recycling ecosystem that is inefficient and doesn’t provide much benefit, they could now actually stand to make a profit, driving recycling to new levels.
There is a lot of room for growth in recycling, which as stated above, makes sense given the issues with the market. The fact that public policy could possibly hold this win-win-win business model back should be appalling to everyone.
Maybe the plastics industry needs to start making some plastic banjos and singing songs about their problems.
