A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels.
With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel.
Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke.
Photo: AP
Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in a week, the machine can process 1.36 tonnes of plastics and produce 1,350 liters of fuel.
The process requires propane to initiate the heating, but once the pyrolysis begins, the gas it produces is used to keep it going, the company said.
Using fuel it produces does emit carbon dioxide, but the company says its net impact is less than comparable fuels because their fuel is lower in sulfur.
Parraguirre Diaz said the machine shows that “we can transform that [plastic] into a product that’s useful and has high value in the world economy.”
“In place of having a dump, it’s as if we dug into the earth and found hydrocarbons that can be used by our community,” he said.
Global plastic production, at already about 400 million tonnes annually, could surge by 70 percent by 2040 without policy changes, the UN has said.
China was by far the biggest exporter of plastic products in 2023, followed by Germany and the US.
Many plastics are used for packaging. Every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes.
Negotiations on a treaty to end plastic pollution concluded in Busan, South Korea, in December last year without reaching an agreement. That was supposed to be the fifth and final round to produce the first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans, by the end of last year.
Petgas envisions a circular economy in which plastic is no longer waste, but rather a resource for the production of fuel.
To that end, the company has organized plastic collection drives to remove bottles and other material from the city’s beaches. It encourages people to bring plastic waste to a drop-off point and receives most of its material clean and shredded from a recycler.
Alexa Mendoza, a biologist specializing in plastic contamination of the sea who is not involved in the project, said that Petgas’ plan was a good initiative, but a “band-aid” for a massive global problem.
“It doesn’t seem to me a solution to put a band-aid on it and say: ‘Great, it’s solved and let’s do it,’ but rather it could be a first step,” Mendoza said. “From there, with the help of scientists, you could take into account what needs to be adjusted so that it doesn’t become another source of pollution.”
For now, Petgas donates the fuel it produces to the local fire department and food delivery services.
“The future is being able to really take production to a scale that has impact,” Parraguirre Diaz said.
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