The dirty little secret of plastic recycling

If you look at the recycling of PET, virtually all PET is sourced from bottles, which means there’s about 1.4 billion pounds actually collected for recycling.

Because California enforces stringent laws on water usage and isn’t quick to grant permits, up until a few years ago there were virtually no U.S. West Coast PET recyclers, said Rougelot.

We've eliminated the use of water and the chemicals used to clean the plastic, asserted Rougelot. We've not only made an environmental choice, but we’ve eliminated the costs associated with water.

No water. No wastes. No extra costs.

ECO₂ says its process of cleaning and recycling bottles was co-developed by Honeywell (NYSE: HON), and, according to Rougelot, is closed-looped.

After all the bottles have been sorted, and the caps and labels are removed, a biodegradable and FDA-approved biosolvent cleans the material, much like the way most other companies use water.

Next, the contaminated biosolvent is run through a distillation process where the sugars and glue are removed and the carbon vapors are captured. The vapors are captured and converted back into a liquid and the distilled solvent then goes back into the system.

The system is finished with a liquid CO₂ bath, which according to Rougelot, is also closed-looped, since the liquid CO₂ used to clean bottles is captured from power plant emissions.

“We’re using post-industrial waste to clean post-consumer waste, said Rougelot. “We put [the carbon] back into the system.

Rougelot argues the company process isn't adding carbon vapors to the environment, as the company takes the pre-captured carbon from other industries to use in cleaning process.

This is material that was going into the air anyway, said Rougelot.

With one PET recycling plant running in Riverbank, California, and another slated to be operational in 2009, Rougelot said the company’s plans are to have between five and ten plants in the U.S in addition to a handful operating internationally.

Rougelot puts the price tag of around $15 million for a plant—a price which includes all the equipment, working capital and necessary cash to ramp up the operation.

“Its equivalent to a water-based recycling plant,” said Rougelot.

Because ECO_2's PET recycling process doesn't use water, it's an attractive solution for countries like India where water is an issue, said Rougelot.

“Water is fast becoming as big of an issue as oil is, or as carbon is as it relates to global warming,said Rougelot. “You'll be hearing a lot more about water, water technologies. It's what will drive our business into the minds of the industry.

With global drought issues like the one announced last week in California, water saving and water-based technologies are poised to take off.

There is likely to be a day where the cost to recycle will be economically unviable,said Rougelot. The displacement of water is phenomenal. We lose about 500 gallons of evaporation a day, versus 25,000 to 100,000 gallons of water.

Rougelot said ECO₂ is awaiting FDA approval for his plastic to be used for PET beverage containers, which currently don't use much post-consumer PET material, but Rougelot says this too is changing.

According to Rougelot, "virgin" PET is becoming more expensive since it's derived from crude oil, and climbing prices are encouraging more bottle and beverage manufacturing companies like Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) and Nestle (VTX: NESN) to move toward higher post-consumer PET percentages in their products.

In an attempt to lead the pack, Coca-Cola recently announced a goal to have 25 per cent post-consumer content in its bottles by 2025. According to Rougelot, the company’s current percentage is much lower.

When asked which industries are buying the most of his post-consumer products, Rougelot pointed to the packaging and strapping industry (the fruit and vegetable containers) and the fibers market.

Currently the beverage industry only purchases approximately 15 per cent of the PET bottles collected for recycling in the U.S.

In terms of horizontal expansion, Rougelot says his company has technology in place to begin recycling HDPE-based containers—the opaque plastic used in milk jugs and liquid laundry detergent containers.

HDPE consumption is about equal in size to PET, but [the recycling is] not as entrenched because there are no real collection institutions.”

For ECO₂, the third recycling endeavor will be ASR, or auto shredder residue, which according to Rougelot contributes 5 billion pounds per year to landfills.

Rougelot says his company is currently working toward making headway with the auto shredding industry through talks with U.S. Car, a consortium of car manufacturers with the interest of reusing plastics from end-of-life vehicles.

While Rougelot wasn’t able to specify a timeframe, he said he expects his company to set up an ASR recycling facility by late 2009.

This week, ECO₂ announced $6.5 million in financing, led by Trident Capital and Thompson Hutton, LLC. The funds are to be used to complete construction of equipment and for working capital.

from:odemade

PET Recycling

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