It isn’t hard to make corporate commitments. In fact, we encourage and work with many of our clients to develop strategic plans to guide actions that can be measured toward achieving goals and it’s a beautiful thing to see companies turn those words on paper into real action.
Shell Polymers has done just that right here in Pennsylvania. The company has committed that, by 2025, it will be using 1 million tonnes of plastic waste in its global chemical plants each year.
Recently, the company announced the roads and parking lots at its petrochemical complex in Beaver County will be paved with a new asphalt that incorporates recycled plastic additive. The paving project will use the equivalent of 3 million plastic grocery bags, reducing waste in landfills, extending the life of a single-use product and pioneering another scalable advancement toward a circular economy (more about this project).
This is just one initiative the company has actively pursued to make good on its zero-waste commitment. In 2019, Shell entered into an agreement with Nexus Fuels to supply its Norco, Louisiana, chemical plant with feedstock made from 100% recycled plastics, offsetting the demand for raw materials such as petroleum and natural gas.
Advanced recycling technologies deployed by companies such as Nexus Fuels have been proven and available for more than a decade, but through advancements and shifts in the market they did not become economically viable until the last three to five years. A burgeoning market of companies is cropping up across the U.S. converting hard-to-recycle plastics into a mix of new chemicals, feedstocks, products and more environmentally friendly transportation fuels.
In fact, Pennsylvania bolstered the movement with a new law last year to provide regulatory certainty for companies using these technologies to ensure they are regulated as manufacturers and not as waste facilities in the state. And, this year, York, Pennsylvania, welcomed the news that it will be home to a production plant that will convert post-use plastics into a concrete additive for building and construction applications.
Advanced recycling operations focus on items such as candy wrappers, polystyrene clamshell food containers and plastic bags (Plastics Nos. 3-7). These are a headache for recycling programs because they can’t be recycled in the existing infrastructure.
The process is basic chemistry. The plastics are heated, causing a change in chemical composition, and then cooled and condensed into feedstock for new petroleum-based products.
Let me stop you before you jump to conclusions about “burning plastics.” This is a completely different chemical process. There is no incineration of the material, or associated emissions, because oxygen is absent and combustion cannot occur.
Plastics are invaluable to our daily lives, and the demand is increasing with the growth of the global middle class. Access to modern conveniences made possible by plastics is improving living standards, hygiene, nutrition and the quality of life for billions of people, but the challenge of waste management is also growing.
Fortunately, chemical and petrochemical companies such as Shell, Covestro, BASF, Braskem, Dow and others in Pennsylvania have made aggressive corporate commitments to reducing waste. These companies are not only making good on their commitments; they are investing in research, developing new solutions and paving the way — quite literally — so we can achieve a circular economy for plastics.
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