Honeywell claims to turn low-quality plastic waste back into oil

The American company Honeywell International, which manufactures chemicals and aerospace parts, said it had come up with a unique solution for the use of plastics. It claims to have developed a method that turns low-quality plastic waste back into oil that can be further used or processed. Honeywell said it has teamed up with Spanish infrastructure firm Sacyr SA to build a factory to build a plant that can convert up to 30,000 tonnes of waste a year through the process of turning plastics back into oil. The company already has processes in place, where it has packages of plastic waste imported and sorts suitable materials for refining into fuel. "We are currently at the point where we can handle both the collection and the subsequent conversion, and we can produce high-quality oil from plastics," Gavin Towler of the Honeywell section, which specializes in this project, told Bloomberg. Honeywell is negotiating with other partners to build and operate sites using its technology. Customers should be, in particular, oil refineries that produce plastics and sell them to consumer goods companies, which could help combat emissions. "Plastics made with new recycled oil technology can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 57% compared to producing the same amount of primary plastic from fossil fuels," the company said. Honeywell's method of transforming plastics is an improvement on a technology known as pyrolysis, which is not new to the recycling segment and is used by other companies trying to figure out how to make the most of recyclable plastics. Only about two percent of plastic waste is now converted into reusable raw material, while more than half is incinerated or landfilled, and another 30% is waste, which often ends up in watercourses or in the ocean. Many companies and scientists are currently recycling or plastics. For example, researchers at the University of Nebraska were trying to find a way to make plastics from feathers, and Ford and Heinz wanted to make microplastics that could be used in the automotive industry from tomatoes. In Barcelona, ​​the production of fuel for taxis from garbage was planned, Indian and Egyptian inventors produce bioplastics from shrimp or tapioca shells, and for example, the clothing company Adidas introduced a collection of swimwear and sneakers from recycled plastics from the oceans.