Reducing plastic waste from landfills

[Julia Sta Romana]

My sister and a few of our friends decided to run a project on reducing the amount of plastic waste in landfills. One important component we saw that was needed to make this project successful and sustainable is to introduce as many value-added or upcycled products from plastics that you can't recycle. Based on our research, we know you can use the plastic to supplement building materials and use it to make string. I was wondering if there's anyone here who can knows if other was to upcycle plastic waste? And maybe help us get in touch with them?

Thank you!

 

[paulears]

Perhaps I'm a bit thick, but I have never heard the term up-cycled before, and aren't familiar with it at all?

 

[Julia Sta Romana]

When you recycle materials, you either upcycle or downcycle them. Downcycling is when you break down a material into raw components. Like when you send your old phones to a recycling facility. They break down the phones and simply harvest the materials they can use.

Upcycling is when you use the entire product to create something of greater value. Like when you turn wooden pallets into backyard furniture.

The problem with plastics is they're very difficult to downcycle. The process of breaking down plastic isn't very efficient and it also produces harmful volatile compounds.

 

[paulears]

So upcycling uses them as direct source material - I get it.

Is there not a problem in segregation. My wife, for example sorts our waste at home based on her opinion of what it is - which is often wrong. She never knew most waste actually says on it "widely recycled" or "not widely recycled" - which confuses her.

I don't think I can help you as while a global nice idea, is it actually economic to actually do? You'd have to sort for exactly the right product, and I don't quite know how you'd do that. Good luck.

I assume this is a school project of some sort?

 

[Julia Sta Romana]

That's exactly the problem we're having. Even though we have a segregation policy in place, our material recovery facility refuses to take most of the plastic because most of them are "not widely recycled"

We've already had some success with using these plastics as a supplementary building material, to the point that it has made our building projects (classrooms and basic housing) more cost efficient. The problem is we still have more plastic than we have uses for them.

What we're hoping is to create an entire value chain so we can use most of the plastic as raw material. Maybe even to the point we can reduce the plastic load of local landfills.

It's a local project we're conceptualizing for our JCI chapter =)

 

[The next Steve Jobs]

I'm working on advanced 'rubbish sorting' techs.

Its going to be a GLOBAL GAME CHANGER and will greatly reduce the need for sorting and sifting rubbish by hand...it will also reduce sorting errors by 90% , this will increase the purity and utility of recycled materials.

The recycling industry is making good headway with automated systems but there is still a big margin of improvement to be made...there will be less humans in the loop, but I don't think there will be too many complaints given the icky nature of the task.

We are activley seeking investment for global rollout of our sorting techs. These thing take time and unfortunately it's not a glossy high profile industry so it might take a while to gain traction in this arena.


*the tech was originally aimed at order picking, but the benefits to the recycling industry are arguably more important so I'm personally pushing this forward.

Ecotech warrior that I am




P.S. If you own a comercial recycling center PM me

 

[Deleted member 226268]

I'm working on advanced 'rubbish sorting' techs.

Its going to be a GLOBAL GAME CHANGER and will greatly reduce the need for sorting and sifting rubbish by hand...it will also reduce sorting errors by 90% , this will increase the purity and utility of recycled materials.

The recycling industry is making good headway with automated systems but there is still a big margin of improvement to be made...there will be less humans in the loop, but I don't think there will be too many complaints given the icky nature of the task.

We are activley seeking investment for global rollout of our sorting techs. These thing take time and unfortunately it's not a glossy high profile industry so it might take a while to gain traction in this arena.


*the tech was originally aimed at order picking, but the benefits to the recycling industry are arguably more important so I'm personally pushing this forward.

Ecotech warrior that I am




P.S. If you own a comercial recycling center PM me

How are you going to sort different grades of plastic from the rubbish ?

.

 

[The next Steve Jobs]

By accurately identifying the grade of plastic / material

A highly skilled human sorter can do this, but even then there are limits to human ability in this regard. Highly skilled sorters are not cheap, they would be happy to deploy thier talents elsewhere, higher up the food chain as it were.

There are several combined technology approaches that could yield dividends.

Currently running a global simulation to map out the future of recycling to indentify the entry pathways and the optimum global solution.

When the tech is applied correctly ( maximising economies of scale etc ) then it will be possible to reduce current landfill tonnage by 90% ... and that my friend is a global game changer.

KEY

Once the correct solutions have been fully identified we ( mankind) can go about reshaping the recyling industry so it's fit for the long tommorow. Ie a system that needs no further modification because it's 'as good as it's going to get' ... bit like the wheel or the knife ... The technologies are ready, it's just a case of iniating global rollout.

It takes about 150 years for most technologies / systems to mature, as far as recyling is concerned we are at the halfway house, the majority of benifts being seen over the next decade or three...assuming we have the correct funding and legislation in effect.

Last but not least

Great ideas are 2 a penny, but great funding regimes and great legislation is a little harder to conjure....welcome to planet STUPID!

 

[The next Steve Jobs]

Current hand recycling methods can sift and sort down to around 100 grams

Our techs will be able to IDENTIFY sift and sort down to 1 gram
( bottle cap/pea size)

... and in some case down to 1/10th of a gram
( where there is an economic or health and saftey reason to do so )


NOTE

Below 1/10th of a gram we are talking powder/sand so unless we are talking gold dust, plutonium or the strategic removal of impurities in bulk material ( fly in the ointment) it is generally uneconomically viable to apply handsorting type technologies....the laws of entropy start to kick in here....in theory manual sorting could be applied down to 1/1000th of a gram but that arena is not going to greatly impact bulk recycling ( for EROEI reasons)

Maxwell's demon may be small but he has an exponentially long reach

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

I read somewhere that a company was making asphalt flooring from recycled plastic - therefore reducing the tonnage of plastic being wasted.

A much bigger game changer to me TBH than anything anyone else is doing yet... I mean, what's it cost to ring a dump/landfill site and ask them to deliver the waste to them rather than dumping it... pay what, £100 a ton of waste? I dunno... to make asphalt to recover floors even on our roads and highways it makes sense... a lot of sense especially when the taxpayers are being charged more and more in taxes yet our roads are getting worse and worse...

 

[AWA Training]

I think there are a number of initatives to use up the plastic. Some are as someone said above, using it to make roads, including it in the asphalt. Some are using the bottles to build houses and it is in mexico i believe being used to actually construct buildings.

I think for the enterprising person who can make use of it has an opportunity to make soem serious money. The Government are stockpiling it as they do not know what to do with it. There is opportunity here.

 

[Mr D]

Would not surprise me to see landfills mined for resources in a few years.