By breaking down plastic waste into reusable petrochemical components, Plastic Back reduces landfill waste, decreases reliance on virgin raw materials, and supports a circular economy.
SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Israeli company Plastic Back, which chemically reverse-engineers plastic waste for upcycling, has announced a strategic partnership with a US-based recycler to establish the first-of-its-kind sustainable waste-management facility in answer to the growing global plastic waste crisis.
With over 400 million tons of plastic waste produced annually worldwide—and less than 6 percent effectively recycled—millions of tons of waste end up in landfills or leak into the environment, contributing to an estimated resource loss of $120 billion per year, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Traditional recycling methods remain inadequate in managing the sheer volume of plastic waste generated.
Plastic Back’s innovative low-temperature chemical recycling technology, which converts hard-to-recycle plastics like PVC into valuable byproducts, was developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with the university’s tech-transfer company, Yissum.
By breaking down plastic waste into reusable petrochemical components, Plastic Back reduces landfill waste, decreases reliance on virgin raw materials, and supports a circular economy.
The company’s mission is to upcycle 100,000 tons of plastic waste by 2030, setting a new benchmark for sustainable plastic recycling. The types of plastic it can treat include polypropylene, high-density polypropylene (HDPE), low-density polypropylene (LDPE), multilayer plastic, mixed plastic and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
“We see the PVC chemical recycling segment as a major opportunity,” said Plastic Back CEO Tal Binder Cohen explaining that PVC is considered a huge bottleneck in the chemical recycling industry. Plastic Back uniquely separates the chlorine from the carbon backbone and then converts the carbon chains to short liquid hydrocarbons.
Binder Cohen said that support from the BIRD Foundation (Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation), the Israel Innovation Authority and the Israeli Ministry of Energ, “enhances our ability to commercialize our solution in the US and close the loop on difficult-to-treat PVC waste streams.”
Cofounder and VP-R&D Uri Stoin, who invented the technology with Prof. Yoel Sasson, said the company’s chemical process breaks down the plastic and converts it into crude oil-like substances (naphtha), which can be refined into new plastics.
This not only reduces plastic waste pollution and plastic waste in landfills but also decreases dependence on virgin raw materials, providing a sustainable solution for the petrochemical industry.
Courtesy: www.israel21c.org
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