We all know that recycling is the right thing to do but, now that China has stopped taking our waste, the Australian government and recycling industries are scrambling to come up with strategies to reduce the amount of plastic we are sending to landfill. We can only recycle a small proportion of plastic waste and we can’t keep just dumping it into the ground. It not only takes thousands of years to deteriorate, but as it does it leaches toxic chemicals which contaminate associated water sources. There’s also literally millions of tonnes that just ends up in our rivers and oceans as it is. Even as we reduce our use of plastics, it will still take decades to actively manage and dispose of what we have now. We can’t just bury this problem for future generations to have to deal with, but need to actively find a sustainable, ecologically low-impact solution to the problem.
The reality is that, as we transition to a lower-carbon economy over the next two to three decades, we will need to develop industry to be less reliant on extracted and imported fossil fuels. Right now we have a huge opportunity to showcase our expertise and skills in converting virtually 100% of our plastic waste into fuel and power that will cleanly close the loop, so that we can eradicate plastic from the environment.
