Plastic Vortex Eyed As Potential Fuel Source

August 10, 2009

Scientist Charles Moore has worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the insidious plastic soup swirling in the North Pacific, but he has said that cleaning it up is impossible. A scientific mission is under way now to see if it's not only possible but an opportunity for recycling.

Project Kaisei is a diverse team of marine scientists, environmentalists, and entrepreneurs sponsored in part by recycling businesses, is working in collaboration with researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Over the weekend, the Kaisei brigatine and Scripps's converted fishing vessel New Horizon reached the gyre, where an estimated four million tons of plastic has gathered due to ocean currents.

Moore has pointed out that some of the plastic pellets are so small that there's no way to remove them without damaging marine life. Plus, it would undoubtedly be an expensive, fuel-intensive endeavor. Kaisei cofounder Mary Crowley told AOL News that her team is looking into ways to remove the plastic debris and turn it into fuel. "We're working on capture technology, all in our effort to figure out the most energy efficient way to collect the debris in the ocean," she told reporter Christine Riedel.

The team is testing out different kinds of active and passive capture methods, including a new barrel-capture technology that might be scalable. In addition, the scientists want to learn more about exactly what all the plastic is, where it is, and what's in it. Once they do, the plastic could go from ocean trash to recyclable treasure.

Photo: The Scripps team uses dip nets to collect specimens from the North Pacific ocean gyre. Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Keeping the Plastiki Boat Afloat

April 03, 2009

Young adventurer and eco-minded heir David de Rothschild plans to cross the Pacific sustainably in a boat made entirely out of recyclable plastic. If he succeeds, his Plaskiki could revolutionize the way we manufacture plastic parts.

The expedition, a nod to Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 crossing in the Kon-Tiki raft, will explore the giant plastic stew called the Eastern Garbage Patch en route. Reading about the Plastiki made me realize how little I understood boat construction. According to John Colapinto in a recent New Yorker article about the project, fiberglass boats can't be recycled--they have to be pulped and buried. Boat recycling might seem unimportant, but de Rothschild is using plastic bottles and self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate or srPET, a relatively new, clothlike, and entirely recyclable plastic. If he can prove that srPET is a real contender, we could end up with larger-scale cradle-to-cradle manufacturing. Plus, we all might end up living in boats if sea levels keep rising.

The boat's launch has been pushed back from the end of this month until late summer due in part to construction problems. Still, de Rothschild's Plastiki at San Francisco's Pier 31 is looking more catamaran than Cast Away.

Photo: The Plastiki in progress. Credit: Peter Jamison/San Francisco Weekly.

More Adventures With Plastic-Eating Bacteria

September 22, 2008

When it comes to bacteria, there's the good, the bad, and the ugh. Fortunately, scientists around the world are working on ways to enlist bacterial help in green technology. A crew from University College Dublin in Ireland has devised a way to put bacteria to use in recycling plastic into better quality versions than the lowly PET we're used to.

You might remember the astute Canadian student who got bacteria to eat plastic, although the jury is still out on how much the bugs will truly chug. Using a different approach, New Zealander Matthew Darby made the mother of all toasty machines to recycle previously-unrecyclable plastic.

One of the big problems with plastic recycling is that the end result is polyethylene terephthalate--a fairly low-grade plastic that isn't as desired as polyhydroxyalkanoate or PHA, a biodegradable plastic that's kind of the Prius of the plastic world. But PHA is expensive to make. Microbiologist Kevin O’Connor and his team came up with a process that sounds a little like alchemy at first, but should work.

O'Connor's group heated PET to break it down into a gas, a liquid, and a solid. From there, they grabbed some Pseudomonas putida, which were partial to the plastic at a local bottling plant in Dublin. Sure enough, the bacteria took a liking to O'Connor's snack and turned the solid--terephthalic acid--into PHA. The other byproducts will be burned as a heat source to make more of the stuff. While it won't outright solve our plastic problems, this process should encourage more recycling and open up new markets. Give that bacteria some props along with the PET.

Photo: An igloo of plastic bottles in Seattle. Credit: Flickr user P.C. Loadletter.

The New Packaging: Just Wash and Roll

September 01, 2008

This weekend I apologized to the planet while throwing away an unrecyclable plastic container for, of all things, organic greens. I know. I know. If Will Penfold's idea catches on, however, perhaps my apologetic days can be put behind me. The UK mechanical design engineering publication Eureka is featuring Penfold's proposal for reusable plastic packaging this week.

Penfold, a graduate from the Royal College of Art in London, created a prototype for packaging made from automotive polypropylene that can be flattened, rolled up, and reused. Having grappled with scissors to pry open useless packaging, especially for electronic devices, this prototype sounds promising. Penfold sees his approach working best for transporting items at first and then later for consumer packaging. The design can be reused at least 10 times before it needs to be recycled. And, according to Eureka, Penfold has patented this idea. Dare I say it? Dude, you're on a roll. Meanwhile, I should look for loose organic greens and put them in one of these.

Photo: Abstract fold. Credit: Flickr user Tanakawho.

OMG: Bugs Ate My Bag!

July 02, 2008

More evidence that kids will save us from environmental purgatory: A teenager in Ontario figured out a way to to decompose a plastic bag over the course of several months instead of several hundred years. Daniel Burd, a 17-year-old student at the Waterloo Collegiate Institute, was hopeful about the idea that plastic bags would break down at all. Using household chemicals, yeast, tap water, plastic-eating microbes, and a grocery bag, he set out to find which bacteria would do the best job.

Burd discovered that combining Pseudomonas and Sphingomonas bacterial strains worked in tandem to produce the best results. Other researchers had discovered the Pseudomonas strain's abilities, but as far as Burd and his science teacher knew, no one had gone this far. The bag broke down about 43% in six weeks. He told The Record, We're using nature to solve a man-made problem.

For his ground-breaking (pardon the pun) work, Burd received the $10,000 top prize at the 2008 Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. His discovery did get some buzz in Canada and a little bit stateside when the news came out, but clearly it warrants more international attention. And give that kid a college scholarship! Now, where'd I put that Pseudomonas?

Photo Credit: Chris Denbow

Los Angeles Has Got Some Balls. No, Really.

June 10, 2008

File this under Are they serious? At first glance, I thought the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) plan to unload plastic balls into the Ivanhoe Reservoir was beyond bad. We're trying to keep plastic out of the water supply, not dump it straight in! But the LADWP had to come up with a way to protect an open-air reservoir that serves 600,000 people in the Los Angeles area. When the treated water is exposed to light, there's a risk that a harmful reaction will occur. The water naturally contains bromide--a recent discovery--and then there's the treatment chlorine, so when sunlight is added to the mix you could get a carcinogenic disaster.

In a ceremony yesterday, the LADWP unloaded 400,000 black plastic "shade balls" into the 58-million-gallon reservoir to protect it--nearly one for every customer. According to an article in the LA Times today, other protective measures would have either been too expensive or taken too long. But it still leaves me with questions: What kind of plastic are these balls made of? Why did they choose dark ones? And is there any precedence showing that this is going to work?

LADWP spokesman Brooks Baker brought me up to speed: "The balls are made of high-density polyethylene," he wrote in an email. He says the National Sanitation Foundation certified the purity of the balls’ ingredients and their safety when in contact with drinking water. "Also, the balls are black for a reason: testing showed that other dyes could potentially leech out over time. Black was the only color that did not leech out."

Baker says that testing over the past eight months showed that the balls did effectively provide shade. Now the plan is to keep adding them to the reservoir, and the neighboring Elysian Reservoir...as soon as the ball manufacturer can churn out the rest of the six million needed.

Photo Credits: LADWP

The Million-Dollar Machine

June 02, 2008

Recycling plastic bags into composites has been around for a little while, but as with all recycling, there are rules. Most places that take them back only take certain kinds of bags. Then the chosen few can be processed into useful materials for building. But what about the rest, like the various colors and compositions? And trickier things like plastic wrap?

New Zealand native Matthew Darby came up with a solution. He first played around with melting bags in a sandwich press to see if he could turn them into something useful. Fortunately he lived to tell the tale and ultimately figured out a way to melt the plastic in a controlled way. He and his business partners patented their Thermo-fusion process for melting all kinds of bags, made a prototype machine, and began producing recycled plastic shipping pallets. Their company, Range Industries, has been getting calls from companies around the world that are interested in buying the Thermo-fusion machines, which cost $1 million each, according to Stuff.co.nz. So far Range Industries has made three of the machines.

I wonder how safe the process is and whether there's and any dangerous offgassing that occurs when the plastic is melted? Hmm. All in all a pretty impressive machine, though. If I had a million to spare, I'd buy one and ask everyone in my neighborhood to give me their unwanted plastic. It's hard to go wrong when you make something useful out of materials you can get for free.

Update: Matthew Darby emailed me with details: "I started this business because I wanted to do something with plastic shopping bags as they were clogging up my kitchen draws. I made enquires and quickly realised that they were all going to landfill." Disturbed by the 12,000 tons being dumped in New Zealand annually, he started melting it to see what would happen. "I tried various ideas until I hit upon the toasty machine as I could control the heat and the compression." As for offgassing, he writes, "Our process does not give off gassing as standard plastics machine, as we do not heat the plastic to molten levels but rather heat enough to remove the memory. We then can mould it into virtually any product."

And the price? "Yes the machine are not cheap, but they also have a good return for anyone that purchases them."

Photo Credit: Matthew Darby