Use1: US car manufacturer Ford found a way to use recycled materials and bioplastics to create lightweight automobile trim material. This initiative not only reduces the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with mining hydrocarbons and refining them into plastic, but also decreases GHG emissions due to the cars’ higher fuel efficiency.
Use 2: Another excellent case is the development of Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle containers – which use plant-based plastics.
Use 3: Israeli company named UBQ materials has created a process to take household garbage and, through a patented conversion process, turns it into fully functional material that can be used in the manufacturing of durable products – such as deck material – and molded and extruded plastic parts – such as garbage cans or plastic pipes. What’s more, UBQ’s team ensures that their plastic products actually serve to permanently sequester carbon emissions – creating a sustainable thermoplastic material that is not just low-carbon or carbon-neutral, but carbon-negative.
Use 4: Saudi Basic Industries Company has a joint venture with an English firm called Plastic Energy to create a "chemical recycling" plant in the Netherlands that will turn plastic from a linear economic source of waste to a circular economic renewable resource.
The essence of the chemical recycling of plastic is different from the "mechanical recycling" that most people know. Mechanical recycling is the process of cleaning, chopping, and melting down of used plastic to create uniform plastic pellets that can be melted down with virgin plastic and reformed into a new plastic good.
Chemical recycling through a process known as pyrolysis heats plastic under pressure in an anaerobic environment in a way that breaks the plastic down into its component hydrocarbons. The result of this process is plastic feedstock – undistinguishable from that coming out of a refinery – ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, and several other useful industrial products.
In a sense, chemical recycling would be the equivalent to taking used paper and, rather than making cardboard out of it, turning it back into raw timber.
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