Innovation Wednesday: Turning Plastic Back to Oil

Vadxx Energy's will be doing a different kind of reycling at a new facility: it will be turning plastic waste back into oil.

Having built a partnership with Greenstar Recycling, Vadxx will be applying its technology to a new recycling plant in Akron, Ohio. They'll be converting curbside plastics back into liquid hydrocarbons, not not dissimilar to the synthetic crude oil that comes out of Alberta's oil/tar sands.

The key benefit here is to close recycling loop. In the past plastics have been economically difficult to recycle because the market demand for used plastics haven't necessarily met up with market supply. By turning used plastics into fuel, oil that would otherwise have been taken out of the ground has been replaced and a waste stream has been eliminated.

On the minus side, the creation and reconstitution of oil products can produce byproducts hazardous to human health and the environment. The proper scrubbers, filters and effluent capture will have to be put into place.