Energetic plastic.

Petroleum, natural gas and alternative energy all play a role in plastics pricing, availability and disposition.

In a session at Recycling Todays Plastics Recycling Conference entitled "Energy: The Double-Edged Sword," Rudy Underwood of the American Chemistry Council offered an overview of how this decade's rising energy costs have affected the plastics industry overall.

The use of plastic in packaging has become popular largely for energy-saving reasons, said Underwood, who noted as an example that it takes seven truckloads of paper bags to equal the number of plastic bags that can be transported in one truckload to serve a retail location.

While petro-chemicals are used in the production of plastic, seemingly a disadvantage, it also means that plastic scrap "is stored energy," said Underwood, who pointed out that one ton of plastic material contains the energy equivalent of eight barrels of oil.

Two additional speakers gave presentations on plastics energy recovery systems currently in use. Greg McWatt of Global Electric Electronic Processing International (GEEP) described how plastics recovered at the company's electronics recycling plant in Ontario are being converted to diesel fuel.

The company's plant in Barrie, Ontario, accepts a wide variety of electronic scrap, using an array of automated equipment to separate the metals, plastics and glass streams.

While the return on scrap metals make the sorting of those materials well worthwhile, the markets for mixed or even slightly contaminated plastic scrap are limited. For that reason, GEEP has invested in a catalytic depolymerization system that converts its mixed plastic scrap into diesel fuel. That fuel is then used to power a generator on site.

According to McWatt, the plant's plastic scrap is currently creating from 500 to 1,000 liters per hour of diesel fuel. The generator powered by the fuel can provide power to the Barrie plant or can generate power to be sold to the Ontario power grid.

Global Resource Corp., West Berlin, N.J., creates systems that turn many forms of waste into power sources. The company's Hawk Hogan said Global Resource Corp.'s microwave and gasification technology is being deployed in Iraq, where military food packaging and other scrap and waste is being converted into an on-site power source.

A system of interest to scrap recyclers is being installed at an auto shredding plant in New York State. That system, according to Hogan, will be able to convert every five tons of auto shredder residue (ASR) into 37 Btus of energy, allowing the troublesome ASR waste product to actually power the shredding plant.