True Circular Economy With the Consortium for Waste to Syngas
October 18,2024
Category: Sustainability
Episode Summary:
Can waste really be turned into valuable resources? Through age-old science, we can turn carbon-based waste into synthesis gas (or syngas) that promises to transform our waste management system by providing sustainable and economically valuable alternatives to current practices. In an episode of our Unpacking Excellence podcast, we sit down with Dr. Bruce Welt from the University of Florida and Calvin Lakhan, Ph.D, of York University on how syngas is enabling the creation of new materials from what we throw away.
In this episode, we cover:
Read along below.
About Our Guests
Bruce Welt
Professor, University of Florida
With a diverse background in education from Clarkson University, Rutgers and the University of Florida, Bruce Welt, has excelled in areas such as chemical engineering, food science and agricultural and biological engineering. Bruce currently works as a full-time professor for the University of Florida’s Packaging Engineering Program and believes in the power of sustainable solutions through syngas that help produce a circular economy.
Calvin Lakhan, Ph.
Research Scientist & Co-Investigator: “The Waste Wiki” - Faculty of Environment and Urban Change, York University
Calvin Lakhan, Ph.D, is currently a research scientist at York University and also serves as Co-Investigator of the “Waste Wiki” project - Faculty of Environment and Urban Change, a research project focused on advancing understanding of waste management research and policy in Canada. Calvin holds a Ph.D in Geography from the University of Waterloo/WLU joint geography program, along with degrees in economics and environmental economics from York. His current research is focused on evaluating the promotion of waste diversion, optimizing the recycling system, examining race and ethnicity as antecedents to recycling behavior and encouraging pro-environmental behavior among minority and marginalized groups.
Listen to the Episode
0:00:01 - Intro
Powered by Adept Group, this is the Unpacking Excellence podcast, bringing together top packaging professionals to share insights and knowledge on all things packaging. Now, introducing Adept Group.
0:00:21 - Adept Group
Welcome to Adept Packaging's Unpacking Excellence podcast. Today, I'm lucky to be joined by two great guests. We have Dr. Bruce Welt of the University of Florida and Dr. Calvin Lakhan of York University. They're both part of the Consortium for Waste-to-Gas Singularity, so that's what we're going to spend our time talking about today. Gentlemen, how are we doing?
0:00:42 - Calvin
Great. Thank you.
0:00:44 - Bruce
Very well, thanks.
0:00:46 - Adept Group
So I'd like to just start by briefly discussing your backgrounds and academic circles and how they led you to your involvement with the Consortium for Waste-to-Gas Singularity. Bruce, can we start with you?
0:00:58 - Bruce
Sure. First, if I could, Daniel, it is the Waste-to-Syngas Circularity.
0:01:05 - Adept Group
Thank you for correcting that. I think I was misreading my own notes here. Okay, tell me a little bit about how you went from your background in academia to being part of the consortium.
0:01:17 - Bruce
Well, both Calvin and I serve on the academic advisory committee for the consortium. So we're serving in an academic post. But basically, my involvement began with my background in chemical engineering. I was in food process development when I was in the industry and came to academia through packaging. So we have a packaging engineering program here at UF, and in response to a lot of what we're seeing out there in terms of bands, straws, bags, cups and various types of packaging materials, I authored an article for Packaging World magazine and began getting a number of calls about it, and it was on this topic of the production of synthesis gas, or syngas, from carbon-based materials which historically has been coal or fossil fuels. But our waste is rich in that kind of thing. So from that, we had some meetings with folks in the industry, from a grassroots type of a thing, organized to create the Consortium for Waste-to-Syngas Circularity.
0:02:33 - Adept Group
And Calvin, what brought you into the project?
0:02:37 - Calvin
Sure. So I am the Principal Investigator of something called the Waste Wiki Project at York. It's Canada's largest research initiative devoted specifically to waste management, and what we discovered was that there's a presumption that our waste system works, and it's out of sight, out of mind, but there's actually a tremendous complication associated with conventional waste management systems, and so my involvement with the consortium is looking to identify new opportunities and solutions to divert waste from landfills and do so in a way that's economically and environmentally responsible. One of the biggest challenges is that we fixate on recycling-based outcomes, so for me, it's always really exciting to work with Dr. Welt and his group because this is truly a new frontier when it comes to managing waste.
0:03:22 - Adept Group
Our audience is primarily based on people in the packaging industry, so various technical backgrounds. But maybe for people who don't have much of a background in chemistry, can you talk a little bit about the science behind the waste-to-syngas conversion process?
0:03:39 - Bruce
Sure. Basically, it's rooted in an ancient process known as gasification. It was discovered probably back in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s and led to powering a lot of industries and lighting streets. That was the initial application of synthesis gas. Actually, it was called other things, like “producer's gas,” “coal gas” or “water gas,” depending on the nature of how it was produced. But ultimately, what we call synthesis gas today is essentially a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and just looking at those two molecules, we have carbon hydrogen and oxygen which are the elements that make up organic chemistry.
So when we call it “synthesis gas,” we have all the things we need to pretty much make everything that we currently make from petroleum. So today, commercially, synthesis gasses are produced on purpose globally and on a large scale, primarily from fossil fuels. So there's a whole industry that's built around making use of synthesis gas. We're just saying that our waste stream has these elements as well, and it's just a matter of modifying the process to accept that and then put it into this process. And what's really exciting is that it's truly circular. It's almost a carbon sequestration process.
It actually is because once the carbon gets into this system and we make plastic, then it becomes waste, and the waste becomes synthesis gas. From there, we can produce new plastic without all the issues that we have with what we currently call recycling, where we have to have processes that would allow us to make food contact materials and things like this. This would be through the process, through virgin materials all over again, things like that. So essentially, that's the process. It breaks down, breaks the bonds that are in the carbon-based materials, produces the synthesis gas, and then, through the magic of organic chemistry, we can make a lot of the products, packaging and plastics that we need in society.
0:05:46 - Adept Group
You mentioned something about how synthesis gas really isn't something new, and there's a whole industry devoted to this already. For the purpose of this conversation, we'll talk mostly about packaging, but how are some different industries already taking advantage of synthesis gas and the technology related to converting things back into synthesis gas?
0:06:06 - Bruce
Today, synthesis gas is a global thing. There's an organization called the Global Syngas Technology Council. You could Google that and see a map of all the gasification going on around the world. By and large, those are coals, petroleum or natural gasses that are being converted into synthesis gas, and then the chemical industries are using that for a variety of things like ammonia or primary feedstock chemicals like acetic acid, acetic anhydride, methanol, ethanol and whatever we need to make subsequent products from now.
So, in terms of what's going on now, one industry in particular that's harnessing this is the airline industry. And a little bit of history here; back in World War II, the Germans didn't have access to petroleum, so they basically were converting coal into synthesis gas, and then through the advent of what we call Fischer-Trough chemistry, they were converting that into all of the products needed for the war effort, which was like jet fuel, diesel, gasoline, naphtha and whatever you needed from that. The South Africans, during Apartheid, did the same thing, and Sassol is a big South African company that's well known for its expertise in this area today. So the airline industry today is now looking at making eco-jet fuel from waste through this process, and the other industry that's coming is also the hydrogen economy, right? So there's a lot of hydrogen in the synthesis gas, and this is a great way to get access to that.
0:07:44 - Adept Group
More specifically regarding the topic of packaging, usually when we talk about sustainability, we're talking about making things recyclable, making them compostable and making them reusable. It seems like a different lane in that conversation. So how do you view the role that waste-to-syngas conversion plays in that conversation about sustainability and circularity?
0:08:07 - Bruce
So, basically, just looking at our options, and I think Cal could really speak to the failing nature of what we think is recycling today, if you just look at recycling today, it's not really recycling. It's molecular reusing. So we're grinding up plastic and melting it down and then reusing it, generally in less valuable applications. So it's really not recycling; it's downcycling, and the net or the ultimate end of that is that those molecules are going to end up in a landfill unless we have something else that could really deal with end-of-life.
So what we call recycling today, when we take our waste bottles and make tennis shoes from them, is nice, and it's good to reuse materials like that, and we're not arguing against doing that. We're just saying that that's not the end.
I mean, the shoe is ultimately going to be used up, and that's going to end up in the landfill, or it'll end up in a park bench and then into a landfill. So ultimately, we need end-of-life solutions in order to achieve circularity. So we're saying that these things need to exist together, and there's a short-term game that companies have to play. We understand that they're under pressure to show that they're working towards some kind of sustainability or circularity, but the long game is really having the infrastructure that can capture these materials before they go to the landfill and put them back into a form that can be properly reused and in their primary application. That means that milk jug to milk jug or water bottle to water bottle, without a lot of interim processing, can also be impactful from its distribution and process elements.
0:09:54 - Adept Group
Bruce, this next one is specifically for you because I read the article that you wrote earlier this spring for Packaging Digest, and I noticed that you specifically mentioned polystyrene in there, which many brands are trying to eliminate because they're end of life is just a landfill for them. They don't really fit into the traditional recycling stream. So how do you think this technology will change the way we think about using polystyrene and other materials that are falling out of favor?
0:10:20 - Bruce
Sure. Well polystyrene was just used as a proxy for all of the structures and materials that we don't have answers for today, and it shows where our system is not really working.
So today, we have multilayer films. Let me back up there and say that we have these terms that get thrown around. We have an environmental impact that people want to minimize, we have sustainability and we have circularity, and they're not all the same thing. So minimizing environmental impact is something we've been doing since the 70s maybe or the 60s, and part of that was the big reduce, reuse, recycle, and go from, say, a glass jar to a PET jar to a flexible structure that has multiple layers and maybe some metalization or foil in it. The argument up until, like a decade ago, was that flexible packaging was minimal and would go into a landfill, and it doesn't degrade, which is good. That's what we really want. We want to entomb it. It's kind of like carbon sequestration, and in terms of looking at the environmental impact of making plastics from fossil fuels and discarding them in landfills, and Calvin can most likely attest to this, is that that's a very low-impact option in terms of energy, transportation and things like that, and that was acceptable as sustainable. Just moving from heavy and bulky materials to smaller and lighter materials serves the purpose of reducing environmental impact in a sensible way. Then we went to sustainability. It took on some new meanings and then, of course, now we're at circularity, and what is sustainable isn't always circular, and what is circular isn't always the least impactful. So we have to deal with all of these issues. But basically, with polystyrene, multilayer and all this stuff, we have no answer for it other than what we're seeing today is a trend towards monolithic.
Everyone wants to make everything out of polyolefin, and that's interesting because there are probably some applications that we might have been over-packaging before that we could put in a polyolefin. But we are going to need multi-layer materials for a long time, and there are a lot of companies that specialize in making products that are the packaging that properly solves the protection problem that we desperately need. So we have to accept the fact that we're going to need a variety of materials, including polystyrene. There's no reason why polystyrene should be left out. So the answer to what we really need here is to break away from our devotion to sorting materials.
Sorting is the problem; plastic isn't the problem. We need processes that are robust, that can handle mixed materials in the process, and that's something that robust gasification can do. We don't really need to sort the materials. That doesn't mean we can't. If someone has a need for high-density polyethylene, we can pull some material out. But ultimately, for all the materials, like polystyrene and other things, they can go in on one end, and out comes a very flexible thing on the output which is that synthesis gas which we could turn into just about anything, new polystyrene, polyolefin or whatever we want.
0:13:46 - Adept Group
I was glad to hear you mention circularity a few times there because that's really a big buzzword these days, and I think, at least my understanding of it, and before I started looking into what you guys do, was very narrowly defined. It seems like this really opens up the conversation about things that can be part of the circular economy.
0:14:03 - Bruce
Absolutely.
0:14:05 - Adept Group
Calvin, maybe this one's a little more in your wheelhouse; what are some of the challenges that you think this technology faces before we get to more widespread adoption?
0:14:15 - Calvin
I think the foremost challenge is just a lack of awareness for both policymakers and consumers. So speaking from a Canadian context, when you raise the term syngas or plasma gasification, you're often met with blank stares, not really knowing what it is, and I think that in a lot of instances, with policymakers in particular, they're fixated on, once again, these recycling-based outcomes. And if anything is not recycling as they perceive it to be, which is mechanical recycling, it's often characterized as bad. So in many instances, I find that the syngas conversation gets lumped into the waste-to-energy conversation, and those are two very distinct things. I think the first step towards broader adoption is just education and awareness and saying that we have more tools in our toolbox than just mechanical recycling or compostable packaging. To Dr. Welt’s original comments, this is a comprehensive solution that addresses many of the challenges associated with the proliferation of lightweight, composite materials, and so I think it's just about getting the message out there. Another challenge from the producer perspective is that a lot of this really just boils down to optics, and I think that one of the reasons why you see so many corporations jump on the recycling bandwagon, even if things get downcycled, is that consumers view recycling as being sustainable. We did a study that looked at various end-of-life outcomes, and consumers actually think recycling is what's best for the environment and not waste reduction or reuse.
And so I think that by overcoming that optics issue and saying that we have an alternative to mechanical recycling that offers superior benefits and communicating that in a way that resonates with consumers, you'll see more brand owners jump on board. But I think for now, there's this reticence that's saying that if we're not saying we're recycling that shampoo bottle into a shoe, we're going to be vilified as not playing our part, so there's a lot of work that needs to be done to communicate not only the viability of the technology but the fact that it's much more economically tenable as well. So as I'm sure you're aware, mechanical recycling costs are going through the roof, and we can't recycle our way out of the waste problem, so I think syngas offers a unique opportunity to overcome the conventional challenges of mechanical recycling.
0:16:33 - Adept Group
On the idea that awareness is one of the biggest obstacles, what can folks whose work focuses on packaging do right now to help overcome that challenge and really help give some momentum to this technology?
0:16:50 - Calvin
So if I could just offer some really quick comments, I think what's really critical is life cycle thinking, this idea that we need to evaluate the merits of both a package and various end-of-life solutions, from a comprehensive lifecycle perspective, because I think that once again, we're tending to fixate on the end-of-life scenario. So I think that the adoption of a more comprehensive, holistic evaluation of the impacts of various end-of-life options, including syngas, can go pretty far away into increasing its adoption because, once again, when we're talking about waste, more specifically packaging waste, we're not really worried about the upstream stuff. We're really fixated on the downstream, the recycling, and ending up in landfills or in our environments when what we really should be doing is taking that more macro, holistic approach and understanding what the impacts are at all stages of a product's life cycle for end-of-life solutions. Is it economically tenable, is it environmentally tenable, is it accessible? And I think that a more holistic approach moving forward is what's really critical.
0:18:02 - Adept Group
Before we wrap up here, are there any important facets of the waste-to-syngas conversion process that we haven't touched on that you think are important for people in the packaging industry to know?
0:18:10 - Bruce
Sure. A very important point is that people are wondering what happened when China stopped taking our plastic. And it is interesting when you look at what China has been investing in. They basically developed what was invented by Mobil in the 70s, a methanol-to-olefins process, and they commercialized it, and they're producing plastic at a huge rate at this point. So what we see in China is that they're converting their coal into synthesis gas because they don't have petroleum, but they're basically using coal, synthesis gas and methanol and then ultimately turning them into plastics.
So the next key after synthesis gas, and I would say syngas is the key to circular economy sustainability, but for packaging people, what we want to see is that that synthesis gas gets converted into methanol, and the Consortium for Waste-to-Syngas Circularity is calling eco-methanol with a trademark on it, so that eco-methanol that's generated from waste is what will be provided uniquely from traditional methanol. So this will be a separate market and certified from waste, and that represents the recycled content. So now, the chemical industry, the folks, the Dow's and Dupont's could then blend the methanol's together, 50-50, 75-25, 100%.
If you make new plastic from eco-methanol at 100%, it's a perfectly virgin material, unlike mechanically recycled stuff. So it's really understanding that full chain. It's waste, syngas, methanol and then back into products and plastics. And it's not just the plastics. There are a whole bunch of other things like paints, adhesives and a lot of other things that go into products, packaging and plastics that come from this cycle, and it's also the textile industry. So there are a lot of aspects to this. People are talking about microplastics. Very little of that comes from the packaging industry. A lot of that is coming from the wash water as well as the textile industry, which uses a lot of plastic. That stuff is ending up in the environment as well. So this solution is not just for the packaging industry; it's for the textile industry, and it's for all of these products that we normally would just put in a lamp. So there's a broader thing from the packaging industry here, but there's a solution for the packaging industry that is unique among all of our options.
0:20:36 - Adept Group
That's a great point that it'll be able to impact a lot more than just packaging. It's going to improve our ability to just make use of waste from a variety of industries.
0:20:46 - Bruce
Exactly.
0:20:47 - Adept Group
Well, I want to thank you guys for taking some time to talk with me today. I appreciate it. I learned a lot more about what it is you guys do, and I think it'll give people a really good idea of some different ways to think about the term sustainability and how we traditionally handle that.
0:21:02 - Bruce
Pleasure.
0:21:03 - Calvin
Great Thank you for having me.
0:21:04 - Adept Group
Okay, Well, thanks, Bruce, and thanks, Calvin.
0:21:07 - Calvin
Take care, guys. Have a great day.
0:21:08 - Outro
Thank you for listening to Unpacking Excellence with Adept Group. For more resources on all things packaging, head to our website, adeptpackaging.com. Don't forget to subscribe, and thanks again for listening.
About Adept Group
Adept Group is a premier packaging partner for some of the most iconic brands in the food & beverage, CPG, pharmaceutical, medical device and industrial industries. Our team has expertise in over 60 specialized areas of focus and is the go-to for packaging needs, from cost optimization to regulatory compliance to design and engineering services. We work with clients to help them maximize the value of their packaging with personalized strategies specific to their industry and goals. Throughout the years, we’ve helped clients save hundreds of millions of dollars through cost-saving approaches to packaging that also coincide with sustainability efforts, helping build trust and credibility with consumers. If you have a packaging challenge, we’re up for it. Get in touch with our team of packaging engineering experts today to get started.
Can waste really be turned into valuable resources? Through age-old science, we can turn carbon-based waste into synthesis gas (or syngas) that promises to transform our waste management system by providing sustainable and economically valuable alternatives to current practices. In an episode of our Unpacking Excellence podcast, we sit down with Dr. Bruce Welt from the University of Florida and Calvin Lakhan, Ph.D, of York University on how syngas is enabling the creation of new materials from what we throw away.
In this episode, we cover:
- The basics of syngas
- Sustainability beyond mechanical recycling
- How syngas fits into the packaging industry today
Read along below.
About Our Guests
Bruce Welt
Professor, University of Florida
With a diverse background in education from Clarkson University, Rutgers and the University of Florida, Bruce Welt, has excelled in areas such as chemical engineering, food science and agricultural and biological engineering. Bruce currently works as a full-time professor for the University of Florida’s Packaging Engineering Program and believes in the power of sustainable solutions through syngas that help produce a circular economy.
Calvin Lakhan, Ph.
Research Scientist & Co-Investigator: “The Waste Wiki” - Faculty of Environment and Urban Change, York University
Calvin Lakhan, Ph.D, is currently a research scientist at York University and also serves as Co-Investigator of the “Waste Wiki” project - Faculty of Environment and Urban Change, a research project focused on advancing understanding of waste management research and policy in Canada. Calvin holds a Ph.D in Geography from the University of Waterloo/WLU joint geography program, along with degrees in economics and environmental economics from York. His current research is focused on evaluating the promotion of waste diversion, optimizing the recycling system, examining race and ethnicity as antecedents to recycling behavior and encouraging pro-environmental behavior among minority and marginalized groups.
Listen to the Episode
0:00:01 - Intro
Powered by Adept Group, this is the Unpacking Excellence podcast, bringing together top packaging professionals to share insights and knowledge on all things packaging. Now, introducing Adept Group.
0:00:21 - Adept Group
Welcome to Adept Packaging's Unpacking Excellence podcast. Today, I'm lucky to be joined by two great guests. We have Dr. Bruce Welt of the University of Florida and Dr. Calvin Lakhan of York University. They're both part of the Consortium for Waste-to-Gas Singularity, so that's what we're going to spend our time talking about today. Gentlemen, how are we doing?
0:00:42 - Calvin
Great. Thank you.
0:00:44 - Bruce
Very well, thanks.
0:00:46 - Adept Group
So I'd like to just start by briefly discussing your backgrounds and academic circles and how they led you to your involvement with the Consortium for Waste-to-Gas Singularity. Bruce, can we start with you?
0:00:58 - Bruce
Sure. First, if I could, Daniel, it is the Waste-to-Syngas Circularity.
0:01:05 - Adept Group
Thank you for correcting that. I think I was misreading my own notes here. Okay, tell me a little bit about how you went from your background in academia to being part of the consortium.
0:01:17 - Bruce
Well, both Calvin and I serve on the academic advisory committee for the consortium. So we're serving in an academic post. But basically, my involvement began with my background in chemical engineering. I was in food process development when I was in the industry and came to academia through packaging. So we have a packaging engineering program here at UF, and in response to a lot of what we're seeing out there in terms of bands, straws, bags, cups and various types of packaging materials, I authored an article for Packaging World magazine and began getting a number of calls about it, and it was on this topic of the production of synthesis gas, or syngas, from carbon-based materials which historically has been coal or fossil fuels. But our waste is rich in that kind of thing. So from that, we had some meetings with folks in the industry, from a grassroots type of a thing, organized to create the Consortium for Waste-to-Syngas Circularity.
0:02:33 - Adept Group
And Calvin, what brought you into the project?
0:02:37 - Calvin
Sure. So I am the Principal Investigator of something called the Waste Wiki Project at York. It's Canada's largest research initiative devoted specifically to waste management, and what we discovered was that there's a presumption that our waste system works, and it's out of sight, out of mind, but there's actually a tremendous complication associated with conventional waste management systems, and so my involvement with the consortium is looking to identify new opportunities and solutions to divert waste from landfills and do so in a way that's economically and environmentally responsible. One of the biggest challenges is that we fixate on recycling-based outcomes, so for me, it's always really exciting to work with Dr. Welt and his group because this is truly a new frontier when it comes to managing waste.
0:03:22 - Adept Group
Our audience is primarily based on people in the packaging industry, so various technical backgrounds. But maybe for people who don't have much of a background in chemistry, can you talk a little bit about the science behind the waste-to-syngas conversion process?
0:03:39 - Bruce
Sure. Basically, it's rooted in an ancient process known as gasification. It was discovered probably back in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s and led to powering a lot of industries and lighting streets. That was the initial application of synthesis gas. Actually, it was called other things, like “producer's gas,” “coal gas” or “water gas,” depending on the nature of how it was produced. But ultimately, what we call synthesis gas today is essentially a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and just looking at those two molecules, we have carbon hydrogen and oxygen which are the elements that make up organic chemistry.
So when we call it “synthesis gas,” we have all the things we need to pretty much make everything that we currently make from petroleum. So today, commercially, synthesis gasses are produced on purpose globally and on a large scale, primarily from fossil fuels. So there's a whole industry that's built around making use of synthesis gas. We're just saying that our waste stream has these elements as well, and it's just a matter of modifying the process to accept that and then put it into this process. And what's really exciting is that it's truly circular. It's almost a carbon sequestration process.
It actually is because once the carbon gets into this system and we make plastic, then it becomes waste, and the waste becomes synthesis gas. From there, we can produce new plastic without all the issues that we have with what we currently call recycling, where we have to have processes that would allow us to make food contact materials and things like this. This would be through the process, through virgin materials all over again, things like that. So essentially, that's the process. It breaks down, breaks the bonds that are in the carbon-based materials, produces the synthesis gas, and then, through the magic of organic chemistry, we can make a lot of the products, packaging and plastics that we need in society.
0:05:46 - Adept Group
You mentioned something about how synthesis gas really isn't something new, and there's a whole industry devoted to this already. For the purpose of this conversation, we'll talk mostly about packaging, but how are some different industries already taking advantage of synthesis gas and the technology related to converting things back into synthesis gas?
0:06:06 - Bruce
Today, synthesis gas is a global thing. There's an organization called the Global Syngas Technology Council. You could Google that and see a map of all the gasification going on around the world. By and large, those are coals, petroleum or natural gasses that are being converted into synthesis gas, and then the chemical industries are using that for a variety of things like ammonia or primary feedstock chemicals like acetic acid, acetic anhydride, methanol, ethanol and whatever we need to make subsequent products from now.
So, in terms of what's going on now, one industry in particular that's harnessing this is the airline industry. And a little bit of history here; back in World War II, the Germans didn't have access to petroleum, so they basically were converting coal into synthesis gas, and then through the advent of what we call Fischer-Trough chemistry, they were converting that into all of the products needed for the war effort, which was like jet fuel, diesel, gasoline, naphtha and whatever you needed from that. The South Africans, during Apartheid, did the same thing, and Sassol is a big South African company that's well known for its expertise in this area today. So the airline industry today is now looking at making eco-jet fuel from waste through this process, and the other industry that's coming is also the hydrogen economy, right? So there's a lot of hydrogen in the synthesis gas, and this is a great way to get access to that.
0:07:44 - Adept Group
More specifically regarding the topic of packaging, usually when we talk about sustainability, we're talking about making things recyclable, making them compostable and making them reusable. It seems like a different lane in that conversation. So how do you view the role that waste-to-syngas conversion plays in that conversation about sustainability and circularity?
0:08:07 - Bruce
So, basically, just looking at our options, and I think Cal could really speak to the failing nature of what we think is recycling today, if you just look at recycling today, it's not really recycling. It's molecular reusing. So we're grinding up plastic and melting it down and then reusing it, generally in less valuable applications. So it's really not recycling; it's downcycling, and the net or the ultimate end of that is that those molecules are going to end up in a landfill unless we have something else that could really deal with end-of-life.
So what we call recycling today, when we take our waste bottles and make tennis shoes from them, is nice, and it's good to reuse materials like that, and we're not arguing against doing that. We're just saying that that's not the end.
I mean, the shoe is ultimately going to be used up, and that's going to end up in the landfill, or it'll end up in a park bench and then into a landfill. So ultimately, we need end-of-life solutions in order to achieve circularity. So we're saying that these things need to exist together, and there's a short-term game that companies have to play. We understand that they're under pressure to show that they're working towards some kind of sustainability or circularity, but the long game is really having the infrastructure that can capture these materials before they go to the landfill and put them back into a form that can be properly reused and in their primary application. That means that milk jug to milk jug or water bottle to water bottle, without a lot of interim processing, can also be impactful from its distribution and process elements.
0:09:54 - Adept Group
Bruce, this next one is specifically for you because I read the article that you wrote earlier this spring for Packaging Digest, and I noticed that you specifically mentioned polystyrene in there, which many brands are trying to eliminate because they're end of life is just a landfill for them. They don't really fit into the traditional recycling stream. So how do you think this technology will change the way we think about using polystyrene and other materials that are falling out of favor?
0:10:20 - Bruce
Sure. Well polystyrene was just used as a proxy for all of the structures and materials that we don't have answers for today, and it shows where our system is not really working.
So today, we have multilayer films. Let me back up there and say that we have these terms that get thrown around. We have an environmental impact that people want to minimize, we have sustainability and we have circularity, and they're not all the same thing. So minimizing environmental impact is something we've been doing since the 70s maybe or the 60s, and part of that was the big reduce, reuse, recycle, and go from, say, a glass jar to a PET jar to a flexible structure that has multiple layers and maybe some metalization or foil in it. The argument up until, like a decade ago, was that flexible packaging was minimal and would go into a landfill, and it doesn't degrade, which is good. That's what we really want. We want to entomb it. It's kind of like carbon sequestration, and in terms of looking at the environmental impact of making plastics from fossil fuels and discarding them in landfills, and Calvin can most likely attest to this, is that that's a very low-impact option in terms of energy, transportation and things like that, and that was acceptable as sustainable. Just moving from heavy and bulky materials to smaller and lighter materials serves the purpose of reducing environmental impact in a sensible way. Then we went to sustainability. It took on some new meanings and then, of course, now we're at circularity, and what is sustainable isn't always circular, and what is circular isn't always the least impactful. So we have to deal with all of these issues. But basically, with polystyrene, multilayer and all this stuff, we have no answer for it other than what we're seeing today is a trend towards monolithic.
Everyone wants to make everything out of polyolefin, and that's interesting because there are probably some applications that we might have been over-packaging before that we could put in a polyolefin. But we are going to need multi-layer materials for a long time, and there are a lot of companies that specialize in making products that are the packaging that properly solves the protection problem that we desperately need. So we have to accept the fact that we're going to need a variety of materials, including polystyrene. There's no reason why polystyrene should be left out. So the answer to what we really need here is to break away from our devotion to sorting materials.
Sorting is the problem; plastic isn't the problem. We need processes that are robust, that can handle mixed materials in the process, and that's something that robust gasification can do. We don't really need to sort the materials. That doesn't mean we can't. If someone has a need for high-density polyethylene, we can pull some material out. But ultimately, for all the materials, like polystyrene and other things, they can go in on one end, and out comes a very flexible thing on the output which is that synthesis gas which we could turn into just about anything, new polystyrene, polyolefin or whatever we want.
0:13:46 - Adept Group
I was glad to hear you mention circularity a few times there because that's really a big buzzword these days, and I think, at least my understanding of it, and before I started looking into what you guys do, was very narrowly defined. It seems like this really opens up the conversation about things that can be part of the circular economy.
0:14:03 - Bruce
Absolutely.
0:14:05 - Adept Group
Calvin, maybe this one's a little more in your wheelhouse; what are some of the challenges that you think this technology faces before we get to more widespread adoption?
0:14:15 - Calvin
I think the foremost challenge is just a lack of awareness for both policymakers and consumers. So speaking from a Canadian context, when you raise the term syngas or plasma gasification, you're often met with blank stares, not really knowing what it is, and I think that in a lot of instances, with policymakers in particular, they're fixated on, once again, these recycling-based outcomes. And if anything is not recycling as they perceive it to be, which is mechanical recycling, it's often characterized as bad. So in many instances, I find that the syngas conversation gets lumped into the waste-to-energy conversation, and those are two very distinct things. I think the first step towards broader adoption is just education and awareness and saying that we have more tools in our toolbox than just mechanical recycling or compostable packaging. To Dr. Welt’s original comments, this is a comprehensive solution that addresses many of the challenges associated with the proliferation of lightweight, composite materials, and so I think it's just about getting the message out there. Another challenge from the producer perspective is that a lot of this really just boils down to optics, and I think that one of the reasons why you see so many corporations jump on the recycling bandwagon, even if things get downcycled, is that consumers view recycling as being sustainable. We did a study that looked at various end-of-life outcomes, and consumers actually think recycling is what's best for the environment and not waste reduction or reuse.
And so I think that by overcoming that optics issue and saying that we have an alternative to mechanical recycling that offers superior benefits and communicating that in a way that resonates with consumers, you'll see more brand owners jump on board. But I think for now, there's this reticence that's saying that if we're not saying we're recycling that shampoo bottle into a shoe, we're going to be vilified as not playing our part, so there's a lot of work that needs to be done to communicate not only the viability of the technology but the fact that it's much more economically tenable as well. So as I'm sure you're aware, mechanical recycling costs are going through the roof, and we can't recycle our way out of the waste problem, so I think syngas offers a unique opportunity to overcome the conventional challenges of mechanical recycling.
0:16:33 - Adept Group
On the idea that awareness is one of the biggest obstacles, what can folks whose work focuses on packaging do right now to help overcome that challenge and really help give some momentum to this technology?
0:16:50 - Calvin
So if I could just offer some really quick comments, I think what's really critical is life cycle thinking, this idea that we need to evaluate the merits of both a package and various end-of-life solutions, from a comprehensive lifecycle perspective, because I think that once again, we're tending to fixate on the end-of-life scenario. So I think that the adoption of a more comprehensive, holistic evaluation of the impacts of various end-of-life options, including syngas, can go pretty far away into increasing its adoption because, once again, when we're talking about waste, more specifically packaging waste, we're not really worried about the upstream stuff. We're really fixated on the downstream, the recycling, and ending up in landfills or in our environments when what we really should be doing is taking that more macro, holistic approach and understanding what the impacts are at all stages of a product's life cycle for end-of-life solutions. Is it economically tenable, is it environmentally tenable, is it accessible? And I think that a more holistic approach moving forward is what's really critical.
0:18:02 - Adept Group
Before we wrap up here, are there any important facets of the waste-to-syngas conversion process that we haven't touched on that you think are important for people in the packaging industry to know?
0:18:10 - Bruce
Sure. A very important point is that people are wondering what happened when China stopped taking our plastic. And it is interesting when you look at what China has been investing in. They basically developed what was invented by Mobil in the 70s, a methanol-to-olefins process, and they commercialized it, and they're producing plastic at a huge rate at this point. So what we see in China is that they're converting their coal into synthesis gas because they don't have petroleum, but they're basically using coal, synthesis gas and methanol and then ultimately turning them into plastics.
So the next key after synthesis gas, and I would say syngas is the key to circular economy sustainability, but for packaging people, what we want to see is that that synthesis gas gets converted into methanol, and the Consortium for Waste-to-Syngas Circularity is calling eco-methanol with a trademark on it, so that eco-methanol that's generated from waste is what will be provided uniquely from traditional methanol. So this will be a separate market and certified from waste, and that represents the recycled content. So now, the chemical industry, the folks, the Dow's and Dupont's could then blend the methanol's together, 50-50, 75-25, 100%.
If you make new plastic from eco-methanol at 100%, it's a perfectly virgin material, unlike mechanically recycled stuff. So it's really understanding that full chain. It's waste, syngas, methanol and then back into products and plastics. And it's not just the plastics. There are a whole bunch of other things like paints, adhesives and a lot of other things that go into products, packaging and plastics that come from this cycle, and it's also the textile industry. So there are a lot of aspects to this. People are talking about microplastics. Very little of that comes from the packaging industry. A lot of that is coming from the wash water as well as the textile industry, which uses a lot of plastic. That stuff is ending up in the environment as well. So this solution is not just for the packaging industry; it's for the textile industry, and it's for all of these products that we normally would just put in a lamp. So there's a broader thing from the packaging industry here, but there's a solution for the packaging industry that is unique among all of our options.
0:20:36 - Adept Group
That's a great point that it'll be able to impact a lot more than just packaging. It's going to improve our ability to just make use of waste from a variety of industries.
0:20:46 - Bruce
Exactly.
0:20:47 - Adept Group
Well, I want to thank you guys for taking some time to talk with me today. I appreciate it. I learned a lot more about what it is you guys do, and I think it'll give people a really good idea of some different ways to think about the term sustainability and how we traditionally handle that.
0:21:02 - Bruce
Pleasure.
0:21:03 - Calvin
Great Thank you for having me.
0:21:04 - Adept Group
Okay, Well, thanks, Bruce, and thanks, Calvin.
0:21:07 - Calvin
Take care, guys. Have a great day.
0:21:08 - Outro
Thank you for listening to Unpacking Excellence with Adept Group. For more resources on all things packaging, head to our website, adeptpackaging.com. Don't forget to subscribe, and thanks again for listening.
About Adept Group
Adept Group is a premier packaging partner for some of the most iconic brands in the food & beverage, CPG, pharmaceutical, medical device and industrial industries. Our team has expertise in over 60 specialized areas of focus and is the go-to for packaging needs, from cost optimization to regulatory compliance to design and engineering services. We work with clients to help them maximize the value of their packaging with personalized strategies specific to their industry and goals. Throughout the years, we’ve helped clients save hundreds of millions of dollars through cost-saving approaches to packaging that also coincide with sustainability efforts, helping build trust and credibility with consumers. If you have a packaging challenge, we’re up for it. Get in touch with our team of packaging engineering experts today to get started.