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Recycled Plastic Could Power Millions, Study Says

Rosalie Murphy |
October 12, 2011 | 12:55 p.m. PDT

Staff Writer

The United States could power more than five million homes with the plastic it sends to landfills annually, Columbia University announced in an Energy report Wednesday. 

Most of California's plastic waste is sent to landfills, but it could produce electricity and oil. Via Creative Commons.
Most of California's plastic waste is sent to landfills, but it could produce electricity and oil. Via Creative Commons.

Recycling at full capacity could reduce the U.S. carbon footprint by as much as 70 million tons of carbon dioxide.

 

Columbia's Earth Engineering Center asserts in the report that the technology to save and convert solid waste already exists, and most states use it. For example, California converted about 600,000 tons of plastic to energy in 2008 - but it send more than 28 million tons, or about 98 percent,to landfills.

 

From CNET.com:

While recycling and energy recovery from plastics is on the rise, about 86 percent of used plastics are still sent to landfills. It's a big waste considering its energy potential, according to the 33-page report, "Energy and Economic Value of Non-recycled Plastics and Municipal Solid Wastes that are Currently Landfilled in Fifty States" (PDF).

About 28.8 million tons of non-recycled plastics were sent to landfills in 2008, the energy potential equivalent of 36.7 million tons of coal or 139 million barrels of oil, said the report.

If that plastic was separated by type, enough petroleum-based plastics could be recovered and sent to a pyrolysis conversion facility, a plant that converts non-recycled plastics into fuel oil, to produce 3.6 billion gallons of oil. That's enough to power 6 million cars for a year.  

 

Reach Rosalie by email here or follow her on Twitter.

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