East Timor plans to become the world’s first ‘plastics-neutral’ economy following a $40m agreement for the development a recycling plant that turns plastic waste into saleable products.
The memorandum of understanding was signed at the University of Sydney by the government of East Timor (Timor-Leste) and Mura Technology, a joint venture between Australia’s Licella Holdings and the UK’s Armstrong Energy.
Mura will assist in establishing the chemical recycling plant via RESPECT, a new not-for-profit organisation that will be able to buy plastic waste from community groups and sell products derived from waste processing. Surplus cash proceeds will then be used help finance community projects.
Demetrio do Amaral de Carvalho, Timor-Leste’s secretary of state for the environment, said: “This is an exciting collaboration for us. Not only will it make a big difference in plastic waste reduction and reduce harm to our cherished marine life, but Timor-Leste can be an example to the rest of the world about what this technology can achieve and the benefits it will have for the planet.”
The new plant will deploy a Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor (Cat-HTR), a chemical recycling technology invented by the University of Sydney’s Prof Thomas Maschmeyer, who founded Licella Holdings to commercialise the technology.
Cat-HTR uses water under high temperature and pressure to chemically recycle waste plastic (including plastic currently deemed non-recyclable) back into oil that can be used to produce new plastic, fuels and chemicals.
Dr Len Humphreys, co-founder and CEO of Licella Holdings, said: “Cat-HTR is much better equipped to handle plastic waste than the current systems in place as it converts all types of plastic waste into high-value products in only 20 minutes.
“This has multiple benefits, such as the reduction in costs for waste producers due to materials re-use, reduced landfill and less plastic in our oceans.”
East Timor generates an estimated 70 tonnes of plastic per day and it is claimed that one Cat-HTR plant could potentially convert the country’s entire plastic waste stream.
Could be a winner, certainly of current interest given the concern about plastic in the oceans.
Look forward to learning more about this.
We must preserve our environment by limiting the plastic industry first, and secondly reduce the using and buying of plastic items especially used in food
This is well know as Thermal depolymerization. It was mooted to one of our governments some years ago and got poo pooed out the door, and is deemed illegal apparently.
A turkey farm in America has been using this method to use up the waste bones etc from their turkey farm. It’s not fully efficient as it costs to heat it all up, but out comes oil and Carbon Black.
You can buy small systems from China.
I’ve said for many years that all our waste , provided its based on Carbon, should be dealt with in this way. The oil would be used in the trucks transporting it to where its being dealt with.
Limiting production is not the solution. The solution is to penalize countries that contract to take plastic waste, then dump it at sea when the bottom falls out of the market.
reminds me of a ‘Dedalus’ bylined ‘New Scientist’ article ( long ago !) – hopefully the profit of the end product exceeds the cost of conversion, but even if not it at least removes that long lived pollutant from the environment ! good luck to them !
Can it genuinely handle all forms of waste plastic, hard and soft?