Interesting development Zoom. Plastic should not be demonised but the way we deal with it should be. We are an inherently dirty species. As individuals we can do our bit but unless we scale it to the macro with governments across the world engaging in solutions then our personal efforts will do little to improve things. What I like about this technology is that there is monetary incentive. When you have got that you are on the right track!
My local council (or more accurately, their waste contractor) has a much simpler way to turn plastic waste to electricity. Anything rejected by the recycling plant gets trucked to the incinerator at Newhaven, where it gets burnt to generate electricity.
Indeed, and it's no ecologically worse than burning the fossil fuel (usually oil) directly... when done in a proper plant with flue gas conditioning.
I think the unidentifiable or unrecyclable plastic waste we generate should be seen not as a pollutant, but as a feedstock. After all, the plants already exist to take crude oil etc and turn them to useful stuff. Catalytically cracking stuff that can't be directly recycled would stave off the end of fossil fuels
I supose that's a start, but we need methods of collecting up all the microplastics that have been ground up through contiual movement and deposited in the sea and on numerous beaches and shores throughout the world.
Shame we can't develop a magnetic plastiser that will only adhear itself to other forms of plastic and then be collected using electromagnets.....
