GREENBACK RECYCLING TECHNOLOGIES: A Genuine Solution in the Quest for a Truly Circular Economy

The world doesn’t have a moment to waste when it comes to reducing the harm caused by plastics. Plastics are everywhere and are poised to dominate the 21st century as one of the yet-unchecked drivers of climate change.

Chemical engineers spent much of the 1960s devising cheap ways to splice different hydrocarbon molecules from petroleum into polymer chains that could be moulded into anything, from beverage bottles to Barbie dolls. My company, Greenback Recycling Technology, uses thermochemical reactions to break plastics down into new products such as monomers, fuel, energy, and other commodities.

The factors contributing to the plastic waste problem range from consumer choice to food supply safety and entrenched manufacturing systems. Not least among these issues is plastic’s seemingly limitless potential to meet consumer demands more cost-effectively than other materials.

Humankind has produced unfathomable quantities of plastic for decades until we suddenly decided that it’s a terrible thing.

It is only recently that plastics’ relative anonymity in ubiquity was disrupted: before this, we were so thoroughly surrounded by plastics that we hardly noticed it.

A SOLUTION FOR POST-CONSUMER WASTE PLASTIC

The desire to see action on plastic waste is easy to understand but identifying the most effective approaches to the problems – and those of the future – represents a complex challenge spanning the entire plastics value chain.

Plastic waste washing up on otherwise pristine shorelines and vast floating islands of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean has received much media coverage and contributed to a significant shift in consumer sentiment.

The way plastic is currently recycled is more of a downward spiral than an infinite loop. Plastics are typically sorted by polymer type, cleaned, shredded, melted, and remoulded in mechanical recycling solutions; each time this occurs, the quality of the material is degraded.

A world where all plastic could be recycled and reborn into new types of plastic is no longer just a dream. Combining mechanical and advanced recycling can recycle over 90% of all plastics worldwide.

Advanced recycling is a natural solution which is increasingly deployed to recycle the unrecyclable. Instead of a system where some plastics are rejected because they are the wrong polymer or made of composites, chemical recycling aspires to return plastics to the original raw materials so that they can be used to make plastic products again as recycled or renewable feedstocks for the existing industry.

In a broad sense, recycling is part of an ethic of resource efficiency – using products to their fullest potential. Natural resources and energy are conserved when recycled rather than “fresh” raw material is used to make a new product.

Advanced recycling boasts a suite of more than 100 technologies that break down polymers. The product of most of these processes becomes the ingredient for producing new plastics that offer the industry recycled feedstocks.

At Greenback, we specialise in implementing scalable and distributed advanced collection and recycling solutions that offer fully traceable recyclate to brand owners and the plastics value chain. Using blockchain-based evidence to trace and authenticate the provenance and composition of materials, waste plastic can be used more efficiently as a feedstock for food-grade commercial packaging applications, at predictable prices and in dependable quantities.

The circular economy as it exists now is vital but narrow in scope. The recycling industry must augment the good but limited mechanical recycling process with innovative new solutions.

Chemical recycling offers new avenues for recyclate that make a global circular economy significantly more viable. However, as an emerging technology, it constantly improves, unlocking new possibilities to find value where there previously were none. There is no better example of this than the pioneering work carried out by our sister company, Enval.

Enval developed a more sustainable pyrolysis technique that uses microwave energy to break down plastics into solid, liquid, and gaseous components. The non-condensable gas is funnelled back into the system and used for power generation, reducing overall CO₂ emissions and energy costs. This microwave-induced system is the only one in the world capable of separating plastic aluminium laminates into low-carbon-cost aluminium and pyrolysis oil altogether. As the technology is refined and improved, this will unlock new revenue streams for the waste handling and recycling industries. This, in turn, creates an abundance of feedstock with which more sustainable plastic packaging can be made.

PART OF THE SOLUTION

Recycling, particularly plastics, is not a panacea to our overuse of natural resources. We cannot continue our addiction to plastics and recycle our way out of the biodiversity and climate crisis. Recycling is vital in closing the loop once prevention and reuse options – such as refillable packaging – have been exhausted.

At Greenback, we plan to drive innovation to empower the circular economy, creating a greener future for all. The advanced recycling plants we are building are scalable and agile and can be quickly established in modular units set up at landfill sites or where the waste occurs or exists. This allows for a more streamlined collection process and creates jobs around the local area, increasing economic productivity in developing nations. Another critical point is that it avoids the highly inefficient transportation of light waste and enables for moving of a valuable densified material instead.

In addition, our proprietary eco2Veritas Circularity Platform™, which is a technology-based real-time monitoring certification system, also allows us to verify that all materials collected are post-consumer waste. We use pioneering blockchain technology to store data about the waste we process in a way that’s both open and secure, so its provenance can be verified at all levels of the supply chain. This allows waste to be digitally tracked on its journey to becoming packaging again, so brands and the plastics value chain can easily verify the recycled content of all their products.

We’re incredibly determined to establish a decentralised network of collection and recycling plants near sources of post-consumer plastic waste worldwide to produce recycled feedstocks suitable for the petrochemical and plastics industry value chain to close the loop. And through smart contracts, we ensure a fair distribution of value to all actors in the supply chain, including the informal waste collection sector.

A NEW APPROACH

Enval’s microwave-induced pyrolysis technology used by Greenback has been explicitly developed to recover complex plastic packaging and enable the harvesting of aluminium in some of these compositions. It can handle many materials, including multi-layer (foil/film) laminates. When carbon is exposed to a microwave field, it can reach temperatures above 600°C in just a few minutes. If shredded dry plastic waste is mixed with the carbon, the energy absorbed from the microwaves is transferred to the plastic by conduction quickly and efficiently. As the packaging travels through the oven, the plastic, glue and ink layers degrade via the pyrolysis process to form a mixture of hydrocarbons, ranging from C3 to C20.

This mixture, gas inside the oven, exits and is then cooled down and separated into two fractions: gas and oil – referred to as Py-Oil. The gas generates the electricity required to power the process, and the condensed oils can be used as feedstock to produce new plastic.

When the right technology is implemented and utilised, shifting to a circular economy creates new markets and opportunities for the petrochemical recycling industry and consumer packaged goods companies. A critical challenge for businesses and brands attempting to solve their plastics waste issues is securing legitimate sources of clean, recycled plastics and verifying the provenance of materials – from the point of collection to use.

Greenback’s new approach and mindset are required to deliver the scale, provenance, and professionalism the waste collection and recycling industry needs to meet demand soon.

By working in partnership with Enval, CPGs and Petrochemical companies to install innovative recycling technology complemented by advanced digital solutions at landfill sites, Greenback is addressing the challenge head-on.

ACHIEVING FULL CIRCULARITY

An apparent change is underway in the business and societal environments in which the chemical industry operates, with consumer sentiment about plastic-waste pollution on the rise, regulators imposing new requirements, and a wider embrace of circular-economy thinking.

To meet the demands of the hundreds of companies committed to eliminating plastic packaging going into landfills or incineration, the plastics industry has embraced advanced recycling in a big way.

Brands and technology innovators are teaming up with us in the quest to make endlessly recyclable plastics. Simultaneously, policymakers are grappling with how to spur this innovation, protect the public and the environment, and support the growth of the infrastructure that advanced recycling needs.

Since 2021, Greenback has been working with Nestlé Mexico to install the first plant in the country to achieve full circularity of food-grade plastic packaging using microwave-induced pyrolysis technology.

Nestlé Mexico will become the first consumer goods company in Mexico and the world to guarantee access to recycled food-grade plastics and first outside Europe to install a chemical recycling plant capable of transforming now discarded plastic packaging into pyrolysis oil that can be used in the petrochemical industry to manufacture new products with post-consumer recycled content.

Our project in Mexico – and the many more to come – will tackle the unresolved problem of turning multi-laminate and mixed plastics that are difficult to recycle into a recyclable waste stream. The aim is to reduce the challenges in packaging recycling, transforming these waste resources into pyrolysis oil that can be used to manufacture certified recycled food packaging to close the loop, genuinely.

We remain committed to delivering a solution for globally recognised brands that can make the previously unrecyclable recyclable, creating an obvious statement about the strength of their commitment to sustainability and the circular economy.

Supporting the growth of a circular economy is a challenge, but it presents a wealth of opportunities for retailers, converters, and manufacturers who use plastic packaging. It encourages continual innovation, and chemical recycling proves that these innovations can result in new revenue streams and improved profitability for everyone in the plastics industry whilst closing the loop for any application.

To find out more about Greenback Recycling Technologies, please visit www.greenback.earth

Content sponsored by Greenback Recycling Technologies