00:00:30 Good morning.

00:00:55 I am E.J. Vandenberg, coordinator of the Industrial Sponsors Group of the Division of Polymer Chemistry.

00:01:03 I will make a few comments before we begin what promises to be an outstanding panel discussion

00:01:11 on polymer recycling, the key issues, a very important current topic.

00:01:20 I, in cooperation with Mike Jaffe, have assembled an expert panel from industry, government, and university.

00:01:31 As you can see, we are videotaping the program.

00:01:37 The videotape will be given free to all the industrial sponsors.

00:01:43 You can obtain a copy by having your company join the industrial sponsors

00:01:49 or, alternatively, by paying $50 per tape.

00:01:56 Our moderator for today's program is Dr. Eric Baer of Case Western Reserve University.

00:02:06 He has a very strong interest in this general area of activity.

00:02:13 He will introduce the panel member to you.

00:02:15 Eric?

00:02:24 Thank you very much, Ed.

00:02:26 I'd like to first thank you and Mike Jaffe for the opportunity to moderate this distinguished panel this morning.

00:02:36 We will spend 10 minutes.

00:02:40 Each panelist will talk 10 minutes to you, and then we will have five minutes for your questions.

00:02:48 And if there's any time remaining at the end, we will open your questions to the panel at large,

00:02:57 and then I'll have just a very couple of concluding remarks.

00:03:03 Our first speaker is Wayne Pearson, who is director of the Plastics Recycling Foundation,

00:03:15 and he's going to talk to us on plastics recycling from vision to reality.

00:03:22 Dr. Pearson?

00:03:24 We sponsor research at a number of universities.

00:03:27 Major pilot plant scale research is at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

00:03:33 First, a little perspective.

00:03:34 You're going to hear more and more about this hierarchy,

00:03:37 and I want to simply focus your mind on the idea that recycling is very near the top.

00:03:42 Recycling is an old word, but basically what it boils down to is you're going to sell somebody your garbage.

00:03:51 Historically, we paid somebody to haul our garbage away from our houses and dump it in a hole in the ground,

00:03:56 and now we have a new idea.

00:03:57 We're going to recycle it by, quote, selling it.

00:04:00 And I'm going to share with you today some of the issues with regard to that.

00:04:06 Very briefly, we're talking about 25% in four years, EPA's goal for our nation,

00:04:14 which is about a two-and-a-half-fold increase from what we've been doing, and that's an enormous job.

00:04:20 And it means separation of the saleable components, aluminum or glass or whatever,

00:04:27 and it means manufacturing those products into something,

00:04:30 and it means selling those products to somebody and selling them over and over and over again.

00:04:37 A manufacturing and marketing business is going to be taking the place of a service business,

00:04:42 and those of you who know anything about business can imagine that's about a two or three orders of magnitude more complex issue.

00:04:50 What I want to do is share with you the highlights of the research on this issue.

00:04:57 Basically, we'll dig down through the garbage pile, and the first thing you see here is that plastics is about 7% of that,

00:05:05 22 billion pounds of that 160 million tons, and about 14 billion of that is packaging.

00:05:12 Packaging is 30% of the total garbage, and all the focus of concern is on it.

00:05:18 And as you can see, plastics is a piece of that, but not the major piece, paper and glass dominate it.

00:05:25 And in the plastic side, about half is rigid containers and about half is film.

00:05:33 And in the rigid, it simply boils down to beverage bottles dominating the containers,

00:05:38 soft drink bottles, milk bottles, water bottles, and so forth, and detergent, bleach, and the rest of it making up the rest of that,

00:05:45 principally two polymers, PET and HDPE.

00:05:49 We do research in four areas, and all four areas have to be in place for recycling to occur.

00:05:56 What this says from our research is that the ordinary drop-offs and buybacks which we've historically used for recycling just won't cut it.

00:06:05 If you want to get major portions of recyclables, you have to go to the curb, make it easy for the consumer, and then you get a lot.

00:06:12 Our research at Rutgers, we've done this in a couple of towns,

00:06:15 given them 20-gallon containers for the recyclables and told them to dump the rest of the trash in the rest.

00:06:21 We haul the recyclables, and if you can see that, it's just what you'd expect, aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic drink bottles, and so forth, and newspapers.

00:06:31 And then it's hauled off in a truck to a place where it's sorted either manually by hand or with machinery.

00:06:40 A magnet will pull the steel out, a netty current will pull the aluminum out,

00:06:44 and then you sort the glass by color and the plastic by polymer type, at this point by hand.

00:06:50 I might point out that the research at Rutgers is showing that we can automate the separation of the plastic beverage bottles

00:06:56 so that we can do it without the intervention of a human hand.

00:07:01 And I want you to only look at one number on this chart, and that's the plastic price, six cents per pound.

00:07:06 It's the second highest value material in a garbage pile, next to aluminum, very significant.

00:07:12 Today, paper is not a penny a pound, it's minus a penny a pound,

00:07:16 and so plastic is going to be more and more asked for by the cities and communities who are trying to do it.

00:07:22 Now, once you have the generic plastic in your hand, you want to recover it and clean it up.

00:07:28 And this is a picture of the pilot plant at Rutgers, which is an 8 million pound per year plant, and it's basically a washing machine.

00:07:34 We chop up the bottles, wash them in a detergent, rinse them, spin dry them, flash dry them,

00:07:40 and if you then go on to melt it into a pellet, it looks very, very much like virgin pellet.

00:07:48 And so we look at end-use markets, and the generic end-use markets are exactly where everybody is manufacturing plastic products from virgin today.

00:07:58 And those are the same buyers, by the way, who are buying this stuff.

00:08:02 So polyester can be made into the face yarn of carpet and a whole variety of products,

00:08:07 which I'll flash through here because you'll get the idea, and that's all I want.

00:08:20 Now, before we take a big look at this, I can mention to you that we've done some research,

00:08:25 and industry's done a lot of work on foam polystyrene and non-foam polystyrene.

00:08:31 Those are recyclable, and there's infrastructure being built to take care of that.

00:08:36 PVC bottles have been captured and recycled, and we don't know how far down into the garbage pile we can literally mine generic products.

00:08:45 But what if you had a pile of crap like this, real garbage, mixed plastics, dirty, unwashed, unclean, metal caps on, and all that?

00:08:54 Well, using this kind of a simple-minded extruder molder, which we have at Rutgers,

00:08:59 and which there are several in the nation already in commercial operation,

00:09:03 it's possible to take that material, chop it up, melt it down, and extrude it into a wide variety of shapes and forms,

00:09:10 which I'm going to show you here very quickly.

00:09:14 Plastic lumber replacing concrete, replacing steel.

00:09:19 Somebody said, well, who wants plastic lumber that lasts 500 years?

00:09:24 Well, to make lumber last 500 years, you'd have to douse it with an awful lot of creosote or copper arsenate, and it won't do it.

00:09:32 I don't know if plastic will last 500 years or not, but its main feature is it doesn't rot, and it doesn't spall, and it doesn't rust,

00:09:40 and it can be made into very valuable things.

00:09:44 Well, that, in a very, very brief, very, very brief overview, looking here only at stars,

00:09:51 which indicates some of the infrastructure that's already out there, commercialization of this stuff.

00:09:57 And this isn't complete, because it doesn't include all of the latest things that have been announced since this chart was made just a few months ago.

00:10:04 But those stars superimposed on the markets is what's happening.

00:10:09 And it is going to become substantial in direct proportion to how much of the plastic component of the garbage we decide to separate out

00:10:20 and make available to private enterprise who is eager and willing to put in these relatively low-cost, by the way,

00:10:28 and neighborhood-friendly plastic reclamation and processing plants.

00:10:33 Thank you very much.

00:10:34 I look forward to questions you'll have on this.

00:10:40 My name is Norbert Michalos.

00:10:42 I'm from the National Science Foundation.

00:10:45 As you know, we are funding some of the work that is going on in this recycling operation through our industrial programs at the Foundation.

00:10:52 Correct.

00:10:52 What I'm interested in asking of you, and perhaps of some of the other panelists,

00:10:57 would be what role the basic science component of the National Science Foundation can play in this recycling operation,

00:11:07 as contrasted to technology, which is what you've just shown, sorting, shredding, and remolding.

00:11:15 Well, I don't think we know that answer yet, but we're working with Alex Schwarzkopf, as you know,

00:11:20 and several of the NAS centers are involved with us.

00:11:25 Rutgers, of course, is a center, Case Western, and we just had Washington and Lee working with Alex.

00:11:32 But I don't know.

00:11:32 When you go into very fundamental work, we may get to that level.

00:11:39 I don't think we're right there yet.

00:11:41 I'm not sure we won't get there, but right now we've got other problems to solve that are more, sort of like you say,

00:11:47 sorting and reclaiming, washing, and that sort of thing.

00:11:51 Richard Gross, University of Lowell.

00:11:53 For what products, for disposable plastics, do you see the cost of the recycling process to be prohibitive?

00:12:07 The question, did everybody hear the question, what products where we feel the cost of recycling will be prohibitive?

00:12:15 First of all, I don't know the answer to your question.

00:12:18 It's too early.

00:12:18 How about disposable diapers?

00:12:22 I don't know.

00:12:24 Pre-consumer diapers are being used right now and recovered,

00:12:29 and there are companies out there that are actually sterilizing those diapers and recovering the plastic.

00:12:35 It all depends on what we are going to use as a nation to drive this.

00:12:42 Now, right now, what's driving it is there is no landfill.

00:12:45 We've decided to shut down our landfills, and so recycling, we've just automatically said.

00:12:50 And if you pay for it as an alternative to expensive or unlimited landfill, you can do it.

00:13:01 I don't think you can draw any line.

00:13:03 I don't even think we should consider drawing any line based on economics on this recycling

00:13:07 because the driving forces are very big and very deep.

00:13:12 Ed Vandenberg, Arizona State University.

00:13:16 As you alluded to in your talk, the cost of waste, the value of waste paper is nil today.

00:13:22 And the Wall Street Journal had a big article about two weeks ago

00:13:26 on the fact that a lot of people were going out of the recycling business

00:13:29 because they were counting on the waste paper to pay for a good part of the operations.

00:13:35 Is this going to be a drastic blow to this recycling thing,

00:13:39 or is there some way we can accommodate that

00:13:43 by getting the paper producers to use more waste paper, obviously?

00:13:48 Well, there was another article in the New York Times yesterday,

00:13:51 which is excellent on the paper issue. I encourage you to read it.

00:13:54 But basically, I think what went out of business is the broker, the middleman.

00:14:01 And I don't know that the plastics, and certainly aluminum and glass,

00:14:06 does not require the middleman to be there.

00:14:08 The paper industry has used that broker extensively,

00:14:12 and I think that the key to your question is the paper industry is going to have to find

00:14:16 a new way to deal with this problem, which they have not yet addressed.

00:14:21 Thank you.

00:14:21 Dr. Julie Gissendanner,

00:14:25 who is an engineer with the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation.

00:14:31 And she will talk to us on Florida legislation and government role.

00:14:35 Ms. Gissendanner.

00:14:39 Each person in Florida generates seven pounds of solid waste a day,

00:14:44 or over one ton of solid waste every year.

00:14:48 If the current growth rate continues,

00:14:51 each person will generate nearly 11 pounds of solid waste a day by the year 2000.

00:14:58 The growth in packaging waste is responsible for much of the increase.

00:15:04 The state's population is increasing at the rate of over 900 people per day,

00:15:09 or the equivalent of a new Tampa every year.

00:15:13 The total amount of solid waste generated is currently 15 million tons.

00:15:18 This rate could double by the year 2000 if nothing is done.

00:15:24 Solid waste is disposed of in three ways, landfilling, combustion, and recycling.

00:15:30 65% is buried in landfills, 25% is burned in waste-to-energy plants, and 10% is recycled.

00:15:41 Siding a landfill is especially difficult in Florida due to groundwater concerns.

00:15:46 Over 90% of the state's drinking water comes from groundwater.

00:15:51 Landfills are all high rise to prevent groundwater intrusion and save space.

00:15:57 The highest point in most coastal counties is now a landfill.

00:16:02 Day County has a landfill that rises 190 feet above sea level.

00:16:08 The costs of solid waste disposal are climbing rapidly,

00:16:11 largely because of new environmental standards and rising land costs.

00:16:16 Landfill construction costs now range from $75,000 to $400,000 per acre.

00:16:23 Closure costs are $150,000 per acre, and landfill tipping fees average $15 to $30 per ton.

00:16:31 Waste-to-energy plant construction costs an average of $100,000 per design ton.

00:16:37 Tipping fees average $50 to $75 per ton.

00:16:43 The state's strategy for dealing with this growing solid waste problem

00:16:48 is encompassed in the 1988 Solid Waste Act.

00:16:52 The Act strongly promotes recycling in a number of ways.

00:16:57 The Act contains recycling goals.

00:17:00 All counties must have initiated a recycling program by July 1, 1989.

00:17:06 The recycling program must separate a majority of the aluminum, glass, newspaper, and plastic bottles.

00:17:14 An advanced disposal fee of one cent per container will be imposed

00:17:18 if a 50% recycling rate is not achieved by 1992.

00:17:24 If the 50% rate is not achieved by 1995, the fee increases to two cents per container.

00:17:31 The advanced disposal fee will be redeemable at recycling centers.

00:17:37 By 1994, counties must also achieve an overall recycling goal of 30%.

00:17:44 This means that 30% of the solid waste generated in 1994 must be recycled,

00:17:50 and no more than half of the goal can be attained by recycling construction and demolition debris,

00:17:56 yard trash, tires, and white goods.

00:18:00 The Act contains recycling incentives.

00:18:03 Equipment integral to recycling is eligible for a refund of sales tax paid for the equipment.

00:18:10 State government is directed to establish price preferences of up to 10%

00:18:15 for products containing recycled materials.

00:18:19 Guidelines on the procurement of materials with recycled content are now being written.

00:18:25 State government is directed to set an example by setting up statewide agency recycling programs.

00:18:31 A highly successful DER in-house program has been in operation for over a year.

00:18:37 An annual survey and directory of the recycling industry is required.

00:18:43 DER has already conducted three such surveys, the most recent of which was published in 1988.

00:18:51 The Department of Commerce is conducting market research and development,

00:18:54 working with over a dozen firms to locate plants in Florida.

00:18:59 Plastics recycling is a key area of interest, with firms looking into recycling of PET and HDPE bottles,

00:19:07 pesticide containers, and agricultural mulches.

00:19:12 The Act provides grants and awards to local governments,

00:19:15 including $25,000 a year base grants for counties with populations less than 30,000

00:19:22 for general solid waste management needs,

00:19:25 $25 million for recycling and education grants to counties and cities with populations greater than 50,000,

00:19:33 $3.75 million for waste tire recycling and management grants to counties,

00:19:38 $1 million for used oil grants,

00:19:41 and $750,000 for awards to local governments which already had recycling programs in place

00:19:48 when the law took effect October 1st, 1988.

00:19:52 The Act also provides grants to the private sector.

00:19:56 DER has $750,000 in grants to be given directly to the private sector for innovative recycling projects

00:20:04 which will demonstrate applications and products from recyclable materials.

00:20:09 The request for proposals should be released this month.

00:20:15 The Act provides for research development and demonstration projects.

00:20:20 The Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management was formed in the State University system

00:20:25 to coordinate applied research.

00:20:28 DER is working with the Center to prioritize research needs.

00:20:33 Plastics recycling is targeted as a top research priority.

00:20:38 A comprehensive packaging study is called for in the Act,

00:20:42 including an evaluation of packaging which contains large concentrations of chloride,

00:20:47 such as that made from PVC, and an evaluation of polystyrene packaging.

00:20:54 Specific demonstration projects are funded for seafood waste disposal, yard trash composting,

00:21:00 and anaerobic digestion of solid waste.

00:21:04 The Department of Transportation is evaluating use of crumb rubber from tires

00:21:09 and ash from the combustion of solid waste in road material

00:21:14 and the feasibility of posts made from recycled plastic.

00:21:19 The Act contains packaging requirements which will directly or indirectly affect recycling.

00:21:26 Beverage containers with detachable metal rings cannot be sold in the state.

00:21:31 Plastic six-pack ring connectors and similar devices must degrade in 120 days.

00:21:37 Plastic bags provided at retail outlets to customers for the purpose of carrying items

00:21:42 purchased by the customer must degrade in 120 days.

00:21:47 This law goes into effect January 1, 1990.

00:21:52 Products packaged in a container made with fully halogenated chlorofluorocarbons

00:21:57 may not be sold in the state after October 1, 1990.

00:22:01 Polystyrene foam and plastic-coated paper products used in conjunction with food

00:22:07 must degrade within 12 months beginning one year after certain conditions are met.

00:22:12 DER believes that the intent of this and the other degradable requirements

00:22:16 is to reduce the amount of litter on the highways and beaches

00:22:20 and to help prevent wildlife entanglement and harm from litter.

00:22:24 At this time, the potential impact on efforts to recycle plastics are not clear.

00:22:31 After July 1, 1990, plastic containers must have molded labels

00:22:36 indicating the plastic resin used to make the container.

00:22:40 The label consists of a number placed inside a triangle and letters placed below the triangle.

00:22:50 In summary, the 1988 Solid Waste Act promotes recycling by establishing recycling goals,

00:22:57 providing incentives and requiring state government to set an example,

00:23:02 providing grants and awards to local governments,

00:23:06 providing grants to the private sector,

00:23:09 providing for research development and demonstration products,

00:23:13 and requiring a content label on plastic containers.

00:23:17 Thank you.

00:23:20 My name is Jim Burrington from BP America.

00:23:23 You mentioned the restrictions on the length of time

00:23:28 for degradation of polyethylene products and the plastic rings.

00:23:31 Are there any stipulations as to what the products of that degradation is?

00:23:37 Yes, we're writing a rule right now that will require the products to degrade to a certain point in 120 days.

00:23:45 They'll have to degrade to a certain point in that 120-day period.

00:23:48 But it's conversion, not what the toxicity of the products may be or classes of products.

00:23:55 The law requires that it not degrade into heavy metals or other toxic compounds.

00:24:02 I'm Bill Daly from LSU.

00:24:05 Associated with this degradation question, have you established the conditions for degradation,

00:24:09 some sort of a criteria that are necessary to affect the degradation?

00:24:12 Yes, we're doing that.

00:24:14 We're basically following ASTM proposed guidelines on that.

00:24:23 Would composting be considered a viable condition for that?

00:24:27 Not really, because we're really interpreting it as a litter problem,

00:24:33 so we're really setting standards for photodegradable plastics.

00:24:41 Duane Priddy, Dow Chemical.

00:24:43 Why are you giving polystyrene 12 months while you gave polyethylene only 120 days?

00:24:49 I don't know why they made it 12 months.

00:24:52 That's in the law. The legislators made that decision.

00:25:01 Ellen C. Polisaw. I just have a question concerning degradation product.

00:25:06 What's the target of the size of the degradation product?

00:25:09 Because, say, if it's a very large piece, it degrades to 10 smaller pieces, but is it going to help?

00:25:17 It's still sitting on the ground.

00:25:19 The end point that we have right now is that the material has to degrade to the point that

00:25:25 it exhibits no more than 0% to 5% elongation, the so-called brittle point.

00:25:30 At that point, the plastic will basically fall apart or crumble in your hand.

00:25:36 You are pretty much left with plastic pieces, that's right.

00:25:41 Our next speaker is Don Jensen, who is business director of Solid Waste Solutions of Dow Plastics.

00:25:52 Dr. Jensen.

00:25:54 I certainly want to thank you for the opportunity to be here to address the question,

00:26:00 polymer recycling, the key issue.

00:26:03 Well, I'm going to take umbrage with that title a little bit.

00:26:08 I will agree that polymer recycling is the key issue for the plastics industry,

00:26:16 at least the key issue as part of the municipal solid waste crisis.

00:26:21 However, it's also clear to me that it's not the key issue in the broader context of the problem.

00:26:29 Success on polymer recycling will not make the municipal solid waste crisis go away.

00:26:41 If I'm a county official looking at a landfill that's going to close in three years,

00:26:51 if I could snap my finger and overnight have a program in which all of the volume

00:26:58 due to plastics disposed in my landfill went away,

00:27:04 I would gain approximately six months of additional life.

00:27:08 Progress could be important progress, it's work we have to do,

00:27:14 but it will not make the problem go away.

00:27:20 The key issue for United States society is to develop more capacity to handle municipal solid waste

00:27:31 relative to that which we're generating.

00:27:34 We're going to need to figure out how to make less of it, how to recycle some of what we do make,

00:27:42 how to recover energy and reduce the volume,

00:27:45 as well as how to site and build landfills that can be sited.

00:27:52 Polymer recycling is a key issue to the plastics industry, as I said.

00:27:59 At last count, Dow Chemical makes more pounds of plastic resins than anybody in the world,

00:28:09 and therefore it is very important to us.

00:28:14 I want to take the time with you today to briefly share the vision we have of the issue,

00:28:20 the one that drives our efforts to be a part of the equation of polymer recycling.

00:28:28 It's an issue that has two components like typical in our business.

00:28:35 There's a supply side problem and a demand side of the problem.

00:28:41 The supply side, even though it's difficult to believe,

00:28:46 with a manufacturer of 50 billion pounds a year or so of plastic articles,

00:28:53 roughly 25% of which ends up in short live applications,

00:28:58 we could possibly have a supply side problem.

00:29:02 But it is going to take work, work by the industry, as individual companies and collectively,

00:29:08 to ensure that enough material of suitable composition is available

00:29:14 to generate the kind of commercial successes necessary to have an impact

00:29:20 on the amount of material we throw away.

00:29:24 The first stage of that, and highlighted already in Wayne's comments, is the collection.

00:29:31 A key component of that is going to be the establishment of curbside recycling programs.

00:29:37 The haulers that have to implement those programs,

00:29:40 whether they're government officials or private industry,

00:29:45 have a concern about the light weight of plastic articles

00:29:48 that end up in their trailers or in their trucks.

00:29:51 Clearly, the densification of those articles,

00:29:54 to be able to give them economics of transportation and collection,

00:29:58 is going to have to happen.

00:30:00 Densification on a collection vehicle is a technology that is not there right now.

00:30:06 It needs to be done.

00:30:07 Helping build the infrastructure to make curbside recycling a reality,

00:30:12 to give them places to go with material,

00:30:15 is something the plastics industry must do.

00:30:18 Individually at companies, probably not a big deal.

00:30:22 But as an industry, we have to begin to approach that.

00:30:25 And there are industry attempts.

00:30:27 You've seen the Plastics Recycling Foundation's presentation.

00:30:32 There's a lot of work being done.

00:30:34 On behalf of the plastics industry, by the Council for Solid Waste Solutions.

00:30:38 Those are the kind of resources that are going to have to be made available

00:30:42 to be successful.

00:30:44 The next stage, after you've collected it, is the sorting of it.

00:30:48 Currently, separation is predominantly manual.

00:30:51 Again, Plastics Recycling Foundation mentioned some of the work they're doing.

00:30:54 There's going to have to be more.

00:30:56 There's going to have to be more technology developed there.

00:31:00 We saw an opportunity for a special relationship to be forged

00:31:05 between a waste processing company and a plastics producer.

00:31:09 And Dow and WTE Corporation developed the two-year demonstration project

00:31:15 in Akron, Ohio,

00:31:17 where 11,000 homes are putting out mixed recyclables every week.

00:31:23 In that mixed recyclable bag or container

00:31:27 are aluminum, glass, paper, metals,

00:31:30 as well as rigid plastic containers.

00:31:34 We are currently processing that, recovering those materials,

00:31:38 selling them, and at the same time,

00:31:41 doing research development on the West Coast with WTE

00:31:45 to be able to automate that separation

00:31:48 for both the plastic and non-plastic articles.

00:31:52 We think that's important work to be done.

00:31:54 The industry and individual companies can be a part of developing that technology

00:31:58 to be successful,

00:31:59 to address the question of can the economics work.

00:32:03 But it is more important,

00:32:05 I think more important for us in industry and for you sitting there,

00:32:09 to begin to work on a demand side of the equation.

00:32:13 To develop the markets for collected, sorted, and cleaned plastic articles

00:32:19 is probably the single largest component we can contribute to

00:32:23 and must contribute to.

00:32:26 There will be co-mingled plastic waste that has to find a home.

00:32:31 It will either be intimately mixed in the fabrication

00:32:34 and can't be separated,

00:32:36 or separations will prove too costly because of low volume.

00:32:40 In any event, the industry needs to sponsor

00:32:43 and is sponsoring work to develop those markets

00:32:46 to begin to understand how it can be processed,

00:32:48 what the economics are, and therefore what markets are potential.

00:32:52 We are starting from a very limited background base

00:32:55 and need to be involved in a hurry.

00:32:59 Generic resins that can be recovered out of the waste stream

00:33:03 as recycled high-density polyethylene,

00:33:06 or polyethylene terephthalate, or polystyrene,

00:33:12 are going to need work also.

00:33:14 But by and large, that burden is going to be carried by the companies in the business already.

00:33:18 They have a knowledge base that is vastly superior to anybody else

00:33:23 and ought to be involved with that work,

00:33:25 and to my measure are being involved with that work.

00:33:28 And what does that mean they need to do?

00:33:31 First, we need to answer the question of how to give

00:33:34 a consistent quality of material.

00:33:37 Not necessarily highest quality material,

00:33:39 but consistent quality of material.

00:33:41 Will there be blending required?

00:33:43 Additives that need to be done?

00:33:45 Whatever it's going to take, we need to develop from that waste stream,

00:33:49 from that sorted and collected material,

00:33:51 a way of making a consistent product.

00:33:54 It needs to be consistent city to city.

00:33:56 That material we receive out of New York can't be any different

00:33:59 than what comes out of Atlanta or Miami.

00:34:03 It needs to be consistent season to season.

00:34:05 Waste disposal patterns change.

00:34:08 The impact on the waste stream and the quality of the product coming out will change.

00:34:12 We need to be able to handle that also.

00:34:17 After developing a consistent quality of material,

00:34:19 we also need to develop, see to a development takes place

00:34:22 of fabrication techniques.

00:34:25 Techniques that can take less than a perfect material,

00:34:28 one that can come at us in different colors,

00:34:31 from different manufacturers,

00:34:33 and from originally different applications,

00:34:35 and move those into a material that's useful,

00:34:39 into a technique that can fabricate and be used for articles,

00:34:42 and finally, to the customer itself.

00:34:46 Obviously, Dow is committing resources to do that.

00:34:48 We're working with customers to do it also.

00:34:51 I think that step of the equation is coming nicely and will be successful.

00:34:56 And the last thing that has to be done is development of whole new applications,

00:35:00 not just extensions of where we are right now.

00:35:03 And from my point of view, that's the fun part of this equation.

00:35:07 If I can put my hands on material that looks basically like high-density polyethylene,

00:35:12 at roughly half the price of original fabrication costs,

00:35:16 available to me in hundreds of millions of pounds,

00:35:20 I think I can develop applications that are going to be lower utility

00:35:25 than the original article can bear.

00:35:29 If it's half price, we have many more applications

00:35:32 that we can move material into.

00:35:35 In addition to the positive marketing advantage of being able to say

00:35:39 it has happened from converted waste from that particular community,

00:35:43 lots of things that can happen.

00:35:45 I think we're excited about that opportunity.

00:35:47 Let me summarize, since I have run out of time.

00:35:51 Plastics recycling has to be viewed as an answer,

00:35:56 not the answer, to municipal solid waste crisis.

00:36:02 The plastics industry must be involved individually and collectively

00:36:07 to make it happen.

00:36:09 It is very important to us to do so.

00:36:12 We are involved, we'll be more so.

00:36:15 There can be developed and will be developed viable, profitable businesses

00:36:21 in which the community participates on the supply side

00:36:24 by generating the material.

00:36:26 The plastics industry has created the demand

00:36:29 and will move that material into the marketplace to be reused.

00:36:34 I hasten to add, however, it will not happen overnight.

00:36:37 It will require technological progress for which we'll all be involved.

00:36:42 I thank you for your attention.

00:36:44 I'm Joseph Kulig.

00:36:46 I'm a student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

00:36:49 My question is, do you comment on what I would term scapegoating

00:36:54 of plastic materials in the larger picture of the solid waste disposal problem?

00:37:03 I'm thinking of countries like Italy, which are imposing in three years' time

00:37:09 all plastic commodities must be biodegradable and recyclable.

00:37:16 You're asking for a comment about that?

00:37:20 Clearly the problem will not be solved by that technology either.

00:37:25 I think there's a lot of work for those of us in the plastics industry to do.

00:37:30 There's work we probably should have been involved in earlier,

00:37:34 and it's going to be done.

00:37:36 I think there are probably less than totally informed legislative attempts

00:37:42 to solve the problem, and far as we can tell from an evaluation of those,

00:37:48 they are non-solutions rather than solutions.

00:37:52 We contend it is still very important for us to put our resources

00:37:57 in the direction of real solutions,

00:38:00 and therefore we'll continue to drive towards making viable businesses

00:38:06 available for polymer recycling.

00:38:12 My name is Craig Perman from 3M Company.

00:38:15 If recycling is successful, then at some point a substantial portion

00:38:18 of recycled materials will be recycled materials.

00:38:21 How often can polymers be recycled into useful products,

00:38:24 and are we looking at a new science of waste polymer recycling?

00:38:29 How many times can polymers be reused?

00:38:32 There is obviously some thermal degradation upon the process of recycling,

00:38:38 remelting, re-extruding, reformulating into a fabricated product.

00:38:44 That probably is somewhere between the mechanical breakdown of paper fiber

00:38:51 when it's recycled and aluminum and glass as it gets recycled.

00:38:56 We clearly will be concerned about that.

00:39:00 However, the bulk of the articles that the material gets moved into the first time

00:39:04 will probably be durable and long life,

00:39:07 which will minimize the impact of that problem.

00:39:11 That is, if you convert them, as Wayne pointed out earlier,

00:39:14 from soft drink bottles to fence posts,

00:39:17 there will be a long time before that fence post needs to be recycled.

00:39:22 That will be a key component to addressing the question

00:39:25 of minimizing the amount of waste discarded.

00:39:29 To convert from a short-lived article into durable goods

00:39:32 is clearly a positive move from that regard,

00:39:35 and it will minimize the impact.

00:39:39 Have you considered any separation as far as the product usage

00:39:44 for what should be recycled and what should be considered

00:39:48 for degradable applications, degradable plastic materials?

00:39:52 I mean, is there any specific products for the different sides?

00:39:58 From our perspective, the view is based upon the probability of being able to recycle.

00:40:04 If there is the application and we'll have the infrastructure

00:40:08 that one could expect recycling to take place,

00:40:11 we will move to develop that application in that manner

00:40:14 rather than try to make it a degradable article.

00:40:17 The key point is that.

00:40:19 However, we are investigating and have on the market

00:40:22 photodegradable polyethylene used in the six-pack carrier,

00:40:27 the required degradability application,

00:40:29 and continue to investigate the potential there.

00:40:32 At this point in time, we believe recycling is a higher choice

00:40:38 of use of our resources than degradability,

00:40:40 but are playing both of those areas.

00:40:43 Our next speaker is Dr. Lee Starr,

00:40:46 who is vice president of technology of Hercestal and Neese Corporation,

00:40:50 who is going to talk to us on technical challenges of plastics recycling.

00:40:54 Dr. Starr.

00:40:56 Thank you, Eric.

00:40:58 As Eric said, I'm going to try and speak a little bit about the technical challenges

00:41:02 in this area of recycling,

00:41:04 but I'll also talk about some of the issues in the solid waste problem,

00:41:09 and plastics are a part of the problem,

00:41:12 and as you heard, we as an industry need and are doing something

00:41:15 about the issue of recycling.

00:41:18 Let me give you some background on the solid waste issue again.

00:41:21 In 1986, 160 million tons of municipal solid waste

00:41:27 were generated in the United States.

00:41:29 It was projected to grow at 1% a year,

00:41:32 and in fact, some of the later figures showing that it's growing at a higher rate.

00:41:37 The number of landfills in the United States is decreasing for a number of reasons.

00:41:41 Many are being closed, and very few are being opened.

00:41:45 This obviously exacerbates the problem,

00:41:47 since at this point in time, 80% of all municipal waste is landfilled,

00:41:52 10% is recycled, and 10% goes to incineration.

00:41:57 Furthermore, the cost of landfilling municipal solid waste is going up.

00:42:02 In my area of New Jersey,

00:42:04 the cost is now $100 to $150 a ton to get rid of this waste.

00:42:10 Now, it's less in other parts of the country,

00:42:13 and the Northeast is heavily impacted,

00:42:16 but this is a trend that will continue across the United States.

00:42:20 So obviously, there's a major economic driver to do recycling.

00:42:26 In the landfill, as you've heard, plastics make up 7% of the weight,

00:42:31 and only 1% of that plastic is currently being recycled.

00:42:35 So obviously, starting from that low base,

00:42:37 we have a real opportunity to increase the amount of plastics

00:42:41 being used in recycling applications.

00:42:44 However, as we've seen somewhat before,

00:42:48 paper and paperboard make up 36% of what goes into a municipal landfill.

00:42:53 Glass is still 8%, and other metals are 9%,

00:42:57 and yard waste is still about 20% of what goes into a municipal landfill.

00:43:03 So there are many other sources and other issues

00:43:06 that have to be addressed to solve that municipal waste and landfill problem.

00:43:11 For education, I think it's important for people to understand

00:43:14 the broad scope of the problem,

00:43:16 not focus on any one thing, and I mean plastics,

00:43:19 and not look for simplistic answers to a very complex problem.

00:43:24 Also, within our industry, in ourselves, and with the general public,

00:43:29 we've got to get them to understand

00:43:31 that plastics are a valuable and recyclable material.

00:43:35 And I'll get to this.

00:43:37 The current management concepts for municipal solid waste

00:43:40 as promulgated by the EPA and other government agencies

00:43:44 and various trade associations and industry groups

00:43:47 are four hierarchical levels.

00:43:49 The first is source reduction, followed by recycle and reuse,

00:43:53 then incineration, and wherever possible, waste-to-energy incineration,

00:43:58 and then finally, landfilling.

00:44:00 And there are technical issues that have to be addressed in all of these areas.

00:44:05 In the source reduction area,

00:44:07 and this is being highlighted by a number of industry groups,

00:44:11 by the Office of Technology Assessment and its report to Congress

00:44:14 and within the EPA,

00:44:16 is can you design products in plastic materials or other materials

00:44:21 that reduce the burden on the municipal solid waste load?

00:44:24 Obviously, one of the concepts here is light-weighting.

00:44:28 I think many of you recognize that aluminum cans and other metal cans

00:44:31 have been significantly light-weighted over the years.

00:44:35 What do you have to do for this?

00:44:37 You've got to look at different products, different polymers,

00:44:40 different product design and engineering designs,

00:44:43 or in reinforcing the container

00:44:45 so that you can still have the strength for it to contain what it has to

00:44:50 and go through the transportation and handling and then be recycled.

00:44:55 Also, we've got to consider building in recyclability

00:45:00 when you design a package or develop a product for packaging.

00:45:05 Composite structures have to be looked at a little bit differently.

00:45:09 Can we, through new polymer and product design and reinforcing

00:45:13 and new types of construction,

00:45:15 reduce the amount of composite materials used for composites and plastics

00:45:20 and therefore make those packages more facile for recycling?

00:45:25 I'll give you one example, although you may not think of it as a composite,

00:45:28 but it is a composite package, and that's the soda bottle.

00:45:32 Right now you have aluminum caps, a polyester bottle,

00:45:35 and a high-density base cap.

00:45:38 It would be much simpler to recycle polyester containers

00:45:41 to a very valuable polyethylene terephthalate polymer

00:45:45 if you can have everything in polyester, and this is being done.

00:45:50 There are new engineering designs in the bottle itself

00:45:53 so that you can remove the base cap

00:45:55 and still have the strength of the bottle to contain the pressure

00:45:59 and also contain the number of trips it has to take in handling.

00:46:03 And also there are many people now using only polyester

00:46:08 and removing the aluminum and the polypropylene,

00:46:11 so now you have a full polyester bottle.

00:46:14 This is very important at this point in time too

00:46:17 because in terms of the time it takes to build an infrastructure

00:46:21 and to get plastics recycled,

00:46:23 the polyester bottle is a prime, prime source for recycled plastic.

00:46:29 Besides recycling, there's a concept that's gaining much favor in Europe

00:46:33 and especially in Germany now that's reuse,

00:46:36 and this is with bottles,

00:46:39 where you can have these soda bottles refilled at a local bottler.

00:46:45 In this instance, there's new product design,

00:46:48 new engineering-type designs

00:46:51 so that these bottles can make 10 to 20 trips

00:46:54 before they can be recycled.

00:46:56 And I think we're going to look at more of that in the United States also.

00:47:02 When you look at recycle centers

00:47:04 and the concept of curbside collection of plastic containers,

00:47:08 you can easily recognize there's a significant problem

00:47:11 in one, identifying the plastics that's used in a container,

00:47:14 and I think you've heard about some of the coding

00:47:17 and labeling techniques that will be used,

00:47:20 and you're looking at things like polystyrene, polyethylene,

00:47:23 high-density, low-density, polyester,

00:47:25 and then you want to separate and sort them

00:47:28 because separated plastics in their own components

00:47:32 have much higher value.

00:47:34 Right now, most recycling centers all use hand sorting,

00:47:38 and that's to separate the plastic materials

00:47:41 out of the mixed stream along the conveyor belt.

00:47:44 I think there's a real need to be able to sort and separate

00:47:47 this mixed plastic stream or the mixed garbage stream

00:47:50 that contains plastics as it moves along the conveyor belt.

00:47:54 There's no commercial technology,

00:47:56 although there's a lot of things being looked at,

00:47:58 that can do this at an economical rate

00:48:01 compared to hand sorting, and that's a real challenge,

00:48:04 both an engineering, technical, and scientific challenge

00:48:07 because you're dealing with crushed, dirty containers

00:48:11 that are moving rapidly along the stream.

00:48:14 So if you look at laser-type of readers or IR or UV

00:48:18 or visible or something like that,

00:48:20 you've got to think about how you can do that.

00:48:22 To give you an example, in the post office,

00:48:25 they used hand sorting on mail.

00:48:28 Their analysis as hand sorting gives them 6 to 10 per second,

00:48:34 and that's the kind of magnitude you're looking at

00:48:36 when you've got a lot of these containers moving along the belt.

00:48:39 So that's your real technical challenge.

00:48:42 Also, in a mixed plastic stream,

00:48:44 we looked at a number of ways to compatibilize the material

00:48:47 in extrusion operations to make composite structures

00:48:51 if you can separate this.

00:48:53 I think there's a lot more work that has to be done

00:48:55 in terms of new ways of alloying and blending plastics

00:49:00 so that the final product doesn't have voids,

00:49:04 major grain boundaries,

00:49:06 that reduces the strength of that final product

00:49:09 so it can be used in engineering-type applications

00:49:12 and not in one-way-type packaging.

00:49:15 It's easy to see how you can do this with polyester.

00:49:19 The polyester we get back now for recycling

00:49:21 goes into a number of fiber applications

00:49:24 and also into engineering plastic applications

00:49:27 because it's a much cleaner material.

00:49:30 When you talk about polyolefins and polystyrenes,

00:49:33 these materials are also being recycled

00:49:36 in a number of applications such as roofing,

00:49:38 soil stabilization, agricultural markets,

00:49:41 and a number of injection molding applications.

00:49:44 However, with those, I think there are a number of issues

00:49:47 we need to address with the polyolefins,

00:49:50 and one is product design, product quality,

00:49:53 and I think a fair amount of new product research

00:49:56 and development for new applications and for new markets.

00:50:00 You have a source of that raw material,

00:50:01 what can we use it for?

00:50:03 Let me talk a little bit about incineration.

00:50:05 In the United States, as I said,

00:50:07 only 10% of the municipal solid waste is incinerated.

00:50:13 It's 30 to 40% in Europe, and it's much higher in Japan.

00:50:17 And we believe that there is currently technology available

00:50:21 for safe and environmentally safe incineration.

00:50:25 What must be overcome is a public perception issue

00:50:29 and things like, yes, I'd like it,

00:50:31 but not in my backyard or not in my term of office

00:50:34 will I approve something like that.

00:50:36 I think it's a viable and a useful technology.

00:50:39 Yes, there may be some more work that's needed

00:50:42 to look at the refractories that are used in incinerators

00:50:46 to make sure it will stand up to the increased use

00:50:49 of plastic materials in the municipal solid waste load

00:50:52 because in there you will have a much higher BTU content.

00:50:56 But I still think it's a viable technology

00:50:59 and it's up to us to prove and demonstrate

00:51:02 that it can be used.

00:51:04 There are only 160 municipal solid waste incinerators now.

00:51:09 120 of them are waste to energy,

00:51:11 and there are 45 more under construction.

00:51:15 Incineration along with recycling,

00:51:17 when we're looking at the economics,

00:51:19 you cannot look at an economic driver of waste to energy

00:51:24 or reducing the cost of energy alone.

00:51:27 I think what's really going to drive this activity

00:51:29 is the cost avoidance of going to landfill

00:51:32 that must be put into the economics equation.

00:51:36 Let me summarize.

00:51:38 The point I'd like to leave you with

00:51:40 is that plastics are recyclable.

00:51:42 The industry, working with local communities,

00:51:44 the government has a long way to go.

00:51:47 I think we have a number of public education

00:51:49 as well as technological and market challenges

00:51:52 to increase the recycled percentage of plastics.

00:51:55 Plastics we use because of low cost,

00:51:58 they're lightweight, their strength, their convenience,

00:52:00 and their ability to be a material of choice

00:52:03 in many of the applications in which they're currently used.

00:52:06 We need to develop improved separations,

00:52:08 sorting technologies, new markets,

00:52:11 and economically separate materials

00:52:14 that can be used for these markets.

00:52:16 I'll hit again on the public education issue

00:52:18 and the issue that has to be addressed

00:52:20 with the public and with ourselves,

00:52:22 that plastics are recyclable,

00:52:24 and to let us in the industry have the time

00:52:27 to demonstrate what we can do in this area.

00:52:30 I think we have a real challenge

00:52:33 to short-circuit what I believe are the wrong approaches

00:52:37 in terms of legislation on banning plastic materials and package.

00:52:41 I just don't think that'll work,

00:52:43 and I don't think that will solve the problem.

00:52:45 And again, we need to look at incineration more in this country

00:52:48 and to demonstrate it's a viable technology

00:52:51 and does not cause an unreasonable risk

00:52:53 to the surrounding community.

00:52:55 Thank you.

00:52:57 Thank you.

00:53:20 The last presentation will be by Professor Bill Bailey

00:53:24 of the University of Maryland

00:53:26 who's going to talk to us about opportunities

00:53:28 with biodegradable polymers.

00:53:30 Professor Bailey.

00:53:32 My role is to put the biodegradable materials in perspective

00:53:39 and see how it fits into this total picture.

00:53:44 Now, the definition that I like for biodegradable polymers

00:53:49 is a polymer in which an organism,

00:53:54 microorganism or something else,

00:53:58 can utilize as food.

00:54:01 And the products of the degradation

00:54:05 are carbon dioxide and water.

00:54:08 So there is no toxic residue remaining.

00:54:15 Now, first of all, we have to say that we have at present

00:54:21 a large number of biodegradable polymers.

00:54:25 All the natural polymers are biodegradable.

00:54:29 Starch, cellulose, proteins, nucleic acids, etc.

00:54:34 are all biodegradable.

00:54:38 And the reason is that they've been on this earth

00:54:41 for millions and millions of years,

00:54:45 and that's plenty of time for the microorganisms

00:54:49 that can utilize them as food to evolve.

00:54:53 Now, unfortunately, these natural polymers

00:54:57 evolved in an aqueous system,

00:54:59 so they're all loaded with polar groups.

00:55:03 And as a consequence,

00:55:05 it is hard to fabricate these materials

00:55:08 because practically all of them decompose before they melt.

00:55:12 And so we can't use the injection molding

00:55:18 and melt extrusion to fabricate them.

00:55:22 On the other hand,

00:55:24 all the synthetic polymers, or most of them,

00:55:29 do have good melting points or softening points,

00:55:34 and they are easy to fabricate

00:55:38 by these normal cheap techniques.

00:55:43 Unfortunately, they've only been around a short time,

00:55:47 and that's not enough time to have microorganisms evolve.

00:55:53 It was just a couple of years ago

00:55:55 that we celebrated the 50th anniversary

00:55:57 of the invention of polyethylene,

00:55:59 and last year it was the 50th anniversary

00:56:02 of the discovery of nylon.

00:56:04 Well, that 50 years is a very short time

00:56:09 in our ecological history.

00:56:14 So we have these two classes.

00:56:18 We have the natural ones that are hard to fabricate,

00:56:23 that are biodegradable,

00:56:25 and we have the synthetic ones that are easy to fabricate

00:56:29 that are not biodegradable.

00:56:32 Well, we wanted to see if we could have a crossover

00:56:38 and find some materials that were biodegradable.

00:56:44 So on the first slide I sketched in what was known,

00:56:52 and it was known that there,

00:56:55 by some work done by Potts about 20-some years ago,

00:57:01 that of all the commercial synthetic polymers

00:57:05 that were known as a class,

00:57:08 only the polyesters were biodegradable.

00:57:12 And these were the polymers that had low glass transitions.

00:57:20 So something like PET,

00:57:22 which has a glass transition up around 100 degrees,

00:57:27 is not biodegradable.

00:57:30 But all the aliphatic ones that had lower TGs,

00:57:34 at least in water, were biodegradable.

00:57:39 And the reason for that is that there is a natural occurring polyester,

00:57:44 which I've sketched on here,

00:57:46 poly-beta-hydroxybutyric acid.

00:57:50 And practically all organisms,

00:57:52 fungi and bacteria,

00:57:54 use this polymer to store energy

00:57:57 in the same way the human body uses fat.

00:58:00 And so they all have extracellular,

00:58:04 non-specific enzymes

00:58:06 that will break down polyesters

00:58:10 into small enough particles

00:58:13 that the microorganism can take in internally

00:58:16 and then use it as food.

00:58:19 Now, the typical polyester that has been

00:58:24 commercialized for a lot of uses

00:58:28 is the polycaprolactone that I've listed here,

00:58:33 and that's the one that Potts was particularly interested in.

00:58:37 And there are other uses.

00:58:39 I've given another example here,

00:58:41 and this is the polyglycolic acid.

00:58:44 American cyanamide has a product,

00:58:48 an absorbable suture called dexon.

00:58:51 And this material in the body

00:58:55 breaks down in about three months.

00:58:58 So that's a typical example of this.

00:59:03 Well, our solution to one of these problems

00:59:08 was to see if we could

00:59:11 make some of the ordinary commercial plastic materials

00:59:16 biodegradable by making them polyesters.

00:59:21 So here, our chemistry was

00:59:24 illustrated on this slide with ethylene.

00:59:27 That is, we used a cyclic ketene acetal

00:59:33 which undergoes free radical ring opening.

00:59:36 And so when we mix that with ethylene,

00:59:40 carry out a copolymerization,

00:59:42 we get a copolymer of the polyethylene

00:59:47 with an ester group in the backbone.

00:59:50 So what we have done is we've converted polyethylene

00:59:53 to a polyester.

00:59:55 And we can vary the amount of ester group

01:00:00 from about 2 to 10 percent or broader.

01:00:03 That's what we've studied.

01:00:05 And we can then therefore regulate the rate

01:00:09 at which the new polyethylene here degrades.

01:00:14 And so if we put in, say, 6 to 10 percent,

01:00:19 it degrades faster than polycaprolactone,

01:00:22 which has been shown that if you bury it in the ground,

01:00:26 will disappear in about one year.

01:00:29 If we put 2 to 4 percent in,

01:00:32 the material degrades at a much slower rate

01:00:36 than polycaprolactone.

01:00:39 So you can pick off any rate that you want

01:00:44 for a particular use.

01:00:46 Now I would say, of course,

01:00:49 that we now have done this with quite a few other polymers.

01:00:54 In the Dallas ACS meeting,

01:00:56 we showed our data on how we made polystyrene biodegradable.

01:01:02 And so we think that we can make

01:01:04 almost any of the common plastics biodegradable.

01:01:08 Now, this doesn't solve all our problems.

01:01:13 Certainly it doesn't solve our landfill problem

01:01:17 because the way we use our landfills

01:01:22 is that we mummify our garbage.

01:01:25 You put a plastic sheet down,

01:01:29 and you put in your garbage,

01:01:31 and then you put a plastic sheet over it,

01:01:33 and then you cover it up,

01:01:35 and there's no water or anything to get in there.

01:01:39 And so even if something is biodegradable,

01:01:42 like the newspapers,

01:01:43 there is no degradation under these conditions.

01:01:49 In order to get something to degrade,

01:01:52 because the microorganisms have to excrete

01:01:55 an extracellular enzyme,

01:01:56 you have to have enough water around to handle it.

01:02:00 So this podium here is biodegradable,

01:02:03 but if I keep it dry, it lasts forever.

01:02:08 And so that's the situation.

01:02:12 In the landfills that people have dug into,

01:02:14 landfills that have been, say, 30 years old,

01:02:17 you can still read the newspapers.

01:02:19 You can still eat,

01:02:21 it looks like you can still eat some of the vegetables

01:02:24 and the chicken bones that are in there.

01:02:26 So it doesn't make sense to put any biodegradable polymer

01:02:31 in one of those landfills,

01:02:32 because it would just stay there again forever.

01:02:37 So we either have to change our method of handling landfills,

01:02:44 or forget about ever decreasing the amount of material in there.

01:02:52 I think right away the biodegradable materials here

01:03:00 will have a big effect on the litter problem.

01:03:04 I, of course, was disturbed that even these six-pack rings

01:03:09 that are photodegradable,

01:03:12 because it doesn't solve the problem.

01:03:15 So what we've been doing is taking our cyclic ketene acetal

01:03:22 and carbon monoxide and ethylene

01:03:25 and making materials that are both biodegradable and photodegradable,

01:03:30 so that when you put a six-pack ring out

01:03:34 and it breaks down in the sunlight,

01:03:38 the residue is biodegradable and disappears.

01:03:41 Or if you throw the six-pack ring under a bush,

01:03:45 it can biodegrade.

01:03:46 Or if you throw it in the ocean,

01:03:50 where these things won't photodegrade

01:03:52 because the water screens it out,

01:03:55 we will have then something that will biodegrade.

01:04:00 So thank you very much.

01:04:01 Bill Daly again from LSU.

01:04:03 Bill, I think the nice part about your polymers

01:04:06 is that they will fit into the composting areas,

01:04:08 and when you really look at the solid waste management,

01:04:11 you have much more materials to compost than not.

01:04:13 Do you want to comment on that?

01:04:15 Well, yes, I think that that's certainly right.

01:04:18 Now, most people are just composting, say,

01:04:23 grass clippings and leaves and things like that.

01:04:27 But I think that many of these other things can be composted.

01:04:32 I think also a very good alternative to this incineration problem

01:04:38 is the biodegradation of the degradable materials anaerobically

01:04:45 to produce methane,

01:04:47 and then collect the methane to produce heat.

01:04:55 So both of those composting to produce residues

01:05:02 and collecting the methane

01:05:04 are certainly compatible with having biodegradable materials.

01:05:09 Now, obviously we only want things that are degradable

01:05:16 are things that have a very short life,

01:05:20 things that you use once and then throw away.

01:05:24 And, of course, that's what we see is the litter problem

01:05:29 because people do tend to throw things away.

01:05:32 So we aren't going to solve all the problems,

01:05:38 and certainly recycling is preferable,

01:05:43 but for these things that are litter,

01:05:48 we don't have a good solution by recycling.

01:05:53 Duane Priddy, Dow Chemical.

01:05:55 Professor Bailey, would you give us your opinion

01:05:57 of putting starch in polymers to make them biodegradable?

01:06:01 Well, I think that that's to a large extent a fake.

01:06:10 If you put a little bit of starch in,

01:06:16 of course the starch is biodegradable,

01:06:20 but if you put it in polyethylene,

01:06:22 that doesn't render the polyethylene degradable,

01:06:26 and so you end up with polyethylene that has holes in it.

01:06:30 If you put enough starch in,

01:06:33 then you will get some degradation

01:06:38 and it will probably break up again,

01:06:41 so it's analogous to the photodegradable materials.

01:06:48 Of course, there are these things

01:06:51 where you use the copolymer of ethylene acrylic acid starch complex,

01:06:59 where, again, the starch is part of the continuous phase

01:07:02 and that falls apart,

01:07:05 and the ethylene acrylic acid is, of course, not degraded,

01:07:11 but apparently can be washed away,

01:07:14 so there are some obvious uses for that,

01:07:18 but you're still left with the non-biodegradable part of the polymer.

01:07:26 And they have been combining starch

01:07:30 with something that will promote oxidation of the residue,

01:07:36 and so obviously the material,

01:07:42 if it oxidizes enough, will fall apart,

01:07:46 but again, the residue is not biodegradable again.

01:07:50 Thank you very much, Phil.

01:07:52 And I'd like to, if Dr. Picales, is he still here?

01:07:56 His question was to distill some of the long-range challenges

01:08:01 in polymer science for this particular area,

01:08:06 and would the panel like to,

01:08:09 now that they've heard each other and heard our questions,

01:08:12 would you like to try that?

01:08:16 Well, I think one of the areas is,

01:08:23 if you really can't separate the plastic stream

01:08:26 and you want to compatibilize a mixed plastic stream

01:08:30 to make it into a useful product for engineering applications,

01:08:35 I think more work has to be done on the kind of blending aids

01:08:39 or alloying aids that are going to be necessary,

01:08:42 and especially if you're going to reinforce that plastic

01:08:44 with long-chain fibers in some way,

01:08:47 you're going to have to have new techniques

01:08:50 for wetting the fiber to make the plastic matrix tight together,

01:08:56 and that's an area that's complicated right now,

01:08:59 with the things we're doing in plastic composite matrices,

01:09:02 and I think it'll be even more complicated

01:09:05 when you have a mixed plastic stream.

01:09:10 Any other comments from the panel?

01:09:13 Well, can we have some more of your questions

01:09:16 and direct it to all of the panel people,

01:09:20 or identify an individual if you choose to?

01:09:24 Yes, please.

01:09:25 Hi, Cindy Simon, Princeton University.

01:09:27 Nobody talked very much about tertiary recycling,

01:09:30 which is pyrolysis of plastics to form fuels

01:09:35 and kind of like anaerobic methods,

01:09:38 and I was wondering about the feasibility and economics of this,

01:09:42 if anyone knows, and especially with respect to thermosets

01:09:46 and cross-linked rubbers and stuff like that.

01:09:50 Who's going to try and handle that?

01:09:53 Okay. We already have the first pan.

01:09:57 We're going to take a crack at it.

01:10:02 The economics are not favorable for pyrolysis at this time.

01:10:07 However, we need to keep this whole issue in perspective

01:10:13 vis-à-vis the price of oil and or coal,

01:10:18 and right now at $15 or $18 a barrel,

01:10:24 the price of new feedstock is too low.

01:10:29 And maybe this is part of the answer to,

01:10:32 or kind of an answer to that earlier question,

01:10:35 what kind of long-range research.

01:10:37 We need to start thinking about the fact

01:10:40 that this product we're dealing with is something that came from oil.

01:10:45 You know, people say,

01:10:47 well, this stuff's going to be in the landfill a million years from now.

01:10:50 Well, if it is, and oil is $100 a barrel a million years from now,

01:10:55 I can guarantee you it will be pyrolyzed,

01:10:58 not incinerated, but it will be mined.

01:11:02 One of the pieces of research that we haven't done,

01:11:05 we don't really have it funded even,

01:11:07 would be to say, why don't we take the plastics,

01:11:09 instead of biodegrading them and scattering them to the four winds,

01:11:13 why don't we consolidate them and landfill them in a storage bin?

01:11:19 And 15 years from now, when the Arabs have us again,

01:11:23 all of a sudden we'll be amazed at how valuable this stuff will be.

01:11:28 And pyrolysis, in my opinion, will fit that very, very nicely.

01:11:32 The technology exists, by the way.

01:11:36 Thank you.

01:11:37 Eric, if I can add to that.

01:11:39 There are examples currently of specialized tertiary recycling that makes sense already.

01:11:44 That is, plastics unzipping back to a monomer.

01:11:49 PET can go through a degradation process that now gives you a polyol.

01:11:55 It is, in fact, a useful product.

01:11:57 There are examples of specialized instances that will, in fact,

01:12:00 create economics that make sense well before pyrolysis as a replacement for incineration,

01:12:07 as a mass waste treatment technology makes economic sense.

01:12:12 Let me add something to that, too.

01:12:15 It really is going to be where the crossover point is,

01:12:18 on the economics of oil and other raw materials versus pyrolysis.

01:12:22 But Herx, Europe, our parent, and ourselves have done some work.

01:12:27 Herx has demonstrated a process to take polyethylene back to ethylene and ethylene oils,

01:12:33 that if the economics ever demonstrate that we can do and are needed, we can do that.

01:12:39 But I don't see that happening short term.

01:12:41 On polyester, Eastman has done it and we've done it.

01:12:45 We can take polyester materials and, through methanolysis,

01:12:50 take it back to dimethyl terephthalate and ethylene glycol

01:12:56 and then make bottles out of it or make anything else out of it again.

01:12:59 But, again, that's going to be an economic consideration.

01:13:02 So those are two things I think we know already how to do,

01:13:05 and the economics are going to drive it.

01:13:12 Has anybody ever done anything...

01:13:14 A little closer to the mic, please.

01:13:16 Has anybody ever done anything with pyrolysis of thermostats,

01:13:18 or is that just not a big enough market for...

01:13:24 I'm not aware of any current data available on that question.

01:13:29 Yeah, the answer is there is a company that has done this,

01:13:33 and, as a matter of fact, they've taken car parts, the SCM,

01:13:37 and they've recovered not only the polymer,

01:13:40 but they've recovered the fiberglass and the filler itself,

01:13:44 making both suitable for reuse.

01:13:47 Again, it's an economic issue.

01:13:49 The technology would be brought to bear very quickly, I think,

01:13:53 if we could find an economic way to drive it.

01:14:00 Ray Odenbright, Virginia Commonwealth University.

01:14:03 ICI in England is developing a new technology

01:14:07 with beta-hydroxybutyrates that are obtainable through bacteriology,

01:14:14 and since there are sources from that,

01:14:18 they're easily biodegraded by a similar microbe.

01:14:21 What do you see as the future of these materials in this country?

01:14:27 Let me...

01:14:29 I worked on that process 23 years ago,

01:14:32 and I was at Mobile Chemical.

01:14:34 Any C4 chain in a fermenter with this particular product

01:14:38 would make the polymer,

01:14:40 and then we'd clean it up and try and do something with it,

01:14:43 and ICI's picked up the technology, too.

01:14:45 There may be some very niche applications for something like that,

01:14:49 but when we looked at the performance of that material

01:14:52 and its properties, we really couldn't find...

01:14:55 And this was not just 23 years ago.

01:14:57 We've looked at it again.

01:14:59 There were just not very many applications

01:15:01 that it was a useful material for.

01:15:06 Yeah, I think they project a price of $15 a pound

01:15:12 when they get going,

01:15:14 and they're not really going yet,

01:15:16 but that's their long-range prediction,

01:15:19 which means that it's going to have some medical uses

01:15:23 and things of this type,

01:15:26 very high-cost items,

01:15:30 and so it's some very interesting polymers and copolymers in that area,

01:15:40 but any time you do it by fermentation

01:15:44 and then have to clean it up,

01:15:46 it will be a high-cost polymer.

01:15:54 There really are two issues that are raised there.

01:15:57 I think we do disservice if we don't address both of them.

01:16:00 First question is how much it's going to cost to make the article,

01:16:04 and obviously the higher-cost material,

01:16:06 the fewer applications are available to it.

01:16:09 That's straightforward economics.

01:16:11 However, there's a secondary part of that question, too,

01:16:13 is what are the properties of the polymer that you make?

01:16:16 What can you do with it?

01:16:18 What will those articles then do?

01:16:21 You don't have infinite flexibility of what you can do with it.

01:16:24 The polymers that come as they're manufactured

01:16:26 have a series of performances.

01:16:28 That's why so many different polymers exist.

01:16:30 I don't need to be explaining this to you, probably,

01:16:32 but we've got to be careful of assuming

01:16:34 that if you make a polymer and make it cheaply,

01:16:36 it'll do everything.

01:16:37 The point of Dr. Bailey's research is clearly

01:16:39 you adjust the percentage of ester linkages

01:16:42 in a polyethylene backbone, and guess what?

01:16:46 You increase more ester linkages,

01:16:48 it forms less like polyethylene.

01:16:50 Those are the kind of trade-offs that have to be made

01:16:52 as you manufacture polymers of this sort.

01:16:55 You don't have, with each of the polymers you make,

01:16:58 because it's biodegradable,

01:16:59 you don't have infinite selection of the things you can do with it,

01:17:02 even if you can make it cheaply.

01:17:10 Are there any other questions?

01:17:13 Well, I would like to try and summarize

01:17:21 a subject that is extraordinarily complex

01:17:25 and terribly difficult

01:17:29 and has many, many viewpoints,

01:17:31 all of which are correct or partially correct.

01:17:34 I wrote down five areas

01:17:40 that we've dialogued with you today,

01:17:43 and I think you will agree that there's something

01:17:46 to these five areas,

01:17:47 and then perhaps we could add a few more areas

01:17:50 if I've left some out.

01:17:53 First of all, I think we'll all agree in this room

01:17:56 that challenges exist,

01:17:58 and these challenges will grow

01:18:01 as we approach the 21st century

01:18:04 throughout the globe, not just in this country.

01:18:08 As the quality of life goes up,

01:18:10 so does the amount of polymers that are being consumed go up,

01:18:14 and subsequently the problems will increase

01:18:18 because there's a direct correlation

01:18:20 between the quality of life in the free world

01:18:23 and the consumption of plastics.

01:18:25 It's a one-to-one correlation.

01:18:27 If you want a good life, you've got to use plastics.

01:18:32 And subsequently, you have the issue

01:18:35 that we're discussing.

01:18:38 I also think that we have a sophisticated database,

01:18:42 but it is not always readily available

01:18:45 to the public at large.

01:18:48 I think we need to develop a broader

01:18:52 and sophisticated database

01:18:54 so that educators,

01:18:58 legislators, scientists,

01:19:00 and the sophisticated commercial establishments

01:19:05 understand plastic materials,

01:19:09 since plastic materials are recyclable.

01:19:12 We've heard that today.

01:19:14 We've heard many examples of that.

01:19:16 And plastic materials are the most flexible materials

01:19:21 and do deliver to the quality of our lives

01:19:27 and many facets of our lives.

01:19:29 And subsequently, the image that the polymer industry has

01:19:33 can be, in my opinion, improved

01:19:36 if this database is available to all parties of our society.

01:19:41 In other words, I think the database

01:19:44 that distills the truth and is legitimate

01:19:47 is the one that I would believe all of us can endorse.

01:19:53 The third area is, of course, the area

01:19:57 where, if you have a database,

01:20:00 you then can educate at all levels,

01:20:03 from your junior high schools or kindergartens

01:20:07 all the way to your senior citizens.

01:20:10 It's a process of education

01:20:12 that emerges from an intelligent database.

01:20:15 And I think, to some extent,

01:20:17 this was discussed not in great depth today.

01:20:22 We also heard a great deal about the driver,

01:20:25 which is economics.

01:20:28 Economics is, of course, a very complex subject,

01:20:31 and it's a system that is in place.

01:20:34 And good ideas must be done in a free society

01:20:39 within a sound economic structure.

01:20:42 And there's a great deal of opportunity

01:20:44 for looking at some of the economic systems

01:20:47 that are here,

01:20:51 and there's going to be some economic opportunities

01:20:54 if we understand the economic driver of some of the issues.

01:20:57 We just discussed this a couple of minutes ago,

01:20:59 some of the economic issues.

01:21:02 I think we also heard today

01:21:04 that we should look at polymers

01:21:06 not only from a recycle point of view.

01:21:09 We should look at polymers' lifecycle point of view.

01:21:13 That's a little different.

01:21:15 In other words, we should look at a material,

01:21:17 or a polymeric material, from birth to grave.

01:21:21 And we heard some discussion,

01:21:24 particularly Starr mentioned the area of reuse

01:21:27 rather than recycle.

01:21:29 Obviously, recycle is from birth to grave also.

01:21:32 However, I think the subject is much broader than recycle,

01:21:36 and I prefer to mention the polymer lifecycle

01:21:40 in which the area of reuse is a large issue

01:21:44 where the designer of the part or the use

01:21:48 has to think about the reuse and the reuse again

01:21:51 of that particular object.

01:21:53 I think that's a coming art, if not a coming science,

01:21:57 and I think that this has been borne out by the panelists.

01:22:03 And last, but certainly not least,

01:22:05 I think I was sitting here hearing

01:22:07 a whole bunch of long-range scientific challenges

01:22:11 and opportunities that I'm sure our colleagues

01:22:15 in the polymer division of the American Chemical Society

01:22:19 will figure out.

01:22:21 And I think maybe we should have in a year or two

01:22:25 at another national meeting

01:22:27 a session on the long-range scientific opportunities

01:22:33 and some of the progress that we're making

01:22:35 in this area with polymers.

01:22:36 I think it would be a very nice technical session

01:22:39 that we could talk about,

01:22:41 where we could go into depth in biodegradation,

01:22:44 photodegradation, recyclability, blends.

01:22:50 The thermosets, how do you make them recyclable

01:22:53 if we make thermoset cars and so on?

01:22:55 And I think that the American Chemical Society

01:22:57 will take that challenge and teach us where we are

01:23:01 and where we have to go.

01:23:03 I think, gentlemen, those were the six issues

01:23:06 that I gathered, and lady, of course,

01:23:09 the six issues that I gathered,

01:23:12 and perhaps you would like to have the last word

01:23:14 and add in some of them,

01:23:16 if there's anything that I left out.

01:23:19 Please.

01:23:24 Well, are there any final comments

01:23:26 from the participants, the conferees?

01:23:32 May we thank you for your patience

01:23:34 and coming to listen to us,

01:23:36 and let's thank our panelists again.

01:23:38 Thank you very much.