Alarming growth of plastic waste generate demand for energy recovery

Category: Environment

Plastics are a part and parcel of our daily modern lives. Inspite of sustainability concerns and efforts by governments and individuals, the amount of waste place produced is an area of concern. According to estimates around 8% i.e. 134 million tons of plastic exists in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) worldwide in 2014. This significant growth in plastic waste has placed major environmental concerns for the economies worldwide. Moreover, waste sites for dumping these waste has already reached to their maximum capacity. So, what’s next? Eco friendly efforts like recycling, biodegradation, feedstock recovery are already in place. However, these can only be applied to certain kind of plastics. Moreover, separation of different kinds of plastic waste is again a major challenge before the companies. This has resulted about 63% of the total plastic waste into landfills. Currently packaging industry is the largest contributor to plastic waste generation. Energy Recovery from plastic waste is both an eco friendly and beneficial approach of waste management. It is estimated that about 134 million tons plastic waste is generated in 2014 which can produce enough energy to replace around 237 million ton of coal at full capacity. The energy from plastic waste can be generated in the form of either oil (refused derived fuel or RDF) or gas (Syngas), depending on the process used. Moreover, this energy serves as an effective alternative for natural oil and gas. Currently 80% of the total energy is derived in the form of RDF.