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New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

sciencedaily.com

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Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#11

Post by JoeAltmaier »

24gttghh wrote: post #10
spodek wrote: post #9

For our personal behavior, let's remember than reducing consumption reduces pollution more than reusing, which reduces pollution more than recycling. By the time you're relying on recycling, you've already polluted a lot more than you needed to, all the more so at the poor efficiency the article reports. If you don't create the plastic bottle you don't have to figure out how to undo its pollution. We probably can't a…

From the final paragraph of the article: "If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it." In effect this could help to reduce consumption as you suggest (and as I agree).

The milk jug is so light and thin already, any more improvement is lost in the noise. Consume (waste) less milk, you're doing an order of magnitude more good.

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#12

Post by byronwall »

> ""What's exciting about this," he said, "is we can go to as low as 1 percent of our additive, and you get a plastic alloy that really has super-great properties.""

The properties of a polymer are specific to the application intended. "Super-great" doesn't appear on a spec sheet [0]. If you're making plastic for high pressure natural gas pipe, you go with a polymer that is different from a film resin. Plastic producers work closely with the end users to craft polymer that matches very specific applications. It's possible that this additive can be crafted for different applications, but combining polyethylene and polypropylene is already starting from different beasts.

In the world of polyethylene, I previously worked at a plant that made ~50 different grades/resins ranging from low to medium to high density PE for wildly different applications (pipe, blow molding, film, etc.). Of those 50 resins, they were made from 2 different catalyst systems and multiple actual catalysts. All of our end product was nominally "polyethylene". That detail worked to ensure you made exactly the polymer you wanted for the application. It is this specification of properties that prevents recycled material from ending up in the critical high volume applications.

If you're making millions of milk jugs a day, it doesn't matter that a single milk jug is worthless. You're using machinery that is custom tuned to the polymer you are running. That tuning relies on the polymer having specific, repeatable properties. We had customers complain when an identical resin was made from different plants at the complex.

> ""If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it.""

Plastic producers can already make stronger polymer that requires less material. Presumably the milk jug folks don't want to pay the premium for it. The same is true of this additive. What does it cost? It's the reason we don't make everything metal out of titanium.

[0] http://www.cpchem.com/bl/polyethylene/en-us/tdslibrary/Marle...

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#13

Post by byronwall »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #11
24gttghh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the final paragraph of the article: "If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it." In effect this could help to reduce consumption as you suggest (and as I agree).

The milk jug is so light and thin already, any more improvement is lost in the noise. Consume (waste) less milk, you're doing an order of magnitude more good.

Millions of pounds of plastic are made every year for milk jugs. A 30% improvement would not be lost in the noise.

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#14

Post by giarc »

spodek wrote: post #9

For our personal behavior, let's remember than reducing consumption reduces pollution more than reusing, which reduces pollution more than recycling. By the time you're relying on recycling, you've already polluted a lot more than you needed to, all the more so at the poor efficiency the article reports. If you don't create the plastic bottle you don't have to figure out how to undo its pollution. We probably can't a…

The 3 R's... Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The order of them is intentional.

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#15

Post by JoeAltmaier »

byronwall wrote: post #13
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The milk jug is so light and thin already, any more improvement is lost in the noise. Consume (waste) less milk, you're doing an order of magnitude more good.

Millions of pounds of plastic are made every year for milk jugs. A 30% improvement would not be lost in the noise.

Lost in the noise of producing milk. There is an astronomical amount of environmental resources to get to the point of filling the jug. Just wasting less milk (buy only what you can use to avoid dumping what has gone bad) would blow 'lighter milk jug' out of the water by many orders of magnitude. And using 30% fewer jugs saves 30% right out of the gate.

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#16

Post by hkmurakami »

spodek wrote: post #9

For our personal behavior, let's remember than reducing consumption reduces pollution more than reusing, which reduces pollution more than recycling. By the time you're relying on recycling, you've already polluted a lot more than you needed to, all the more so at the poor efficiency the article reports. If you don't create the plastic bottle you don't have to figure out how to undo its pollution. We probably can't a…

I wonder what the balance of increased e-commerce (packaging materials) to reduced shopping gas consumption is like for resource use.

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#17

Post by javiramos »

spodek wrote: post #9

For our personal behavior, let's remember than reducing consumption reduces pollution more than reusing, which reduces pollution more than recycling. By the time you're relying on recycling, you've already polluted a lot more than you needed to, all the more so at the poor efficiency the article reports. If you don't create the plastic bottle you don't have to figure out how to undo its pollution. We probably can't a…

I am very skeptical about recycling (I do recycle though) - it seems like a tremendous about of CO2 is spent just moving the recycled goods from homes to the recycling facilities + the energy spent recycling the product + the energy used shipping the product to a plastics distributor. The option of filling our landfills is also costly but is it offset by recycling?

Does anyone know how recycled plastics stack up against new plastic once you consider the energy used in the entire recycling chain?

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#18

Post by chr1 »

javiramos wrote: post #17
spodek wrote: post #9

For our personal behavior, let's remember than reducing consumption reduces pollution more than reusing, which reduces pollution more than recycling. By the time you're relying on recycling, you've already polluted a lot more than you needed to, all the more so at the poor efficiency the article reports. If you don't create the plastic bottle you don't have to figure out how to undo its pollution. We probably can't a…

I am very skeptical about recycling (I do recycle though) - it seems like a tremendous about of CO2 is spent just moving the recycled goods from homes to the recycling facilities + the energy spent recycling the product + the energy used shipping the product to a plastics distributor. The option of filling our landfills is also costly but is it offset by recycling? Does anyone know how recycled plastics stack up agai…

It's not only about CO2, burning plastics produces other harmful compounds, and without burning they stay for very long.

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#19

Post by DannyBee »

DanBC wrote: post #6
xbmcuser wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens to the rest is mentioned in the article as well.

From the article: 2% recycled 33% lost 40% landfil 14% incinerated 89% total? I don't know what happens to the rest.

It's stuck in abandoned homes or under crawlspaces?

Re: New polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

#20

Post by wflynny »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #15
byronwall wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of pounds of plastic are made every year for milk jugs. A 30% improvement would not be lost in the noise.

Lost in the noise of producing milk. There is an astronomical amount of environmental resources to get to the point of filling the jug. Just wasting less milk (buy only what you can use to avoid dumping what has gone bad) would blow 'lighter milk jug' out of the water by many orders of magnitude. And using 30% fewer jugs saves 30% right out of the gate.

Isn't this reasoning essentially comparing a drop-in replacement with an ideal, though? Assuming this is a new technology that can actually make it through to manufacturing changes, the possible 30% reduction in plastic by using hybrid PE/PP is controlled by the relatively few milk producers and should be much more tenable than the societal change required for 30% reduction in milk use. Both reduce plastics usage, but one is a relatively quick change and the other requires change from many independent agents over a long time, so I don't understand why one is being trivialized. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
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