Out of his love for the environment and concern about over-flowing landfills, Akinori Ito, from the Japanese company Blest, developed a machine capable of transforming plastic back into oil for use as gasoline or kerosine.
While the process is easy to understand the results are pretty impressive: For every 1kg of plastic, 1 liter of oil can be harvested. Aside from the obvious advantage of this process targeting issues of plastic recycling, the machine also breaks down the byproduct of carbon dioxide into water.
Plastic’s carbon footprint is very high, since incineration is often its destination because the recycling rate is so low around the globe.
The tabletop machine can be transported via commercial airline and taken to developing countries where they have no capability to recycle trash.
“(After seeing a demonstration of the machine) people begin to see that this is not garbage,” said the inventor. “The plastic cap, the (carryout) lunch container, is oil.”
Further, if oil and gasoline could be created in these countries, they wouldn’t have to import it from faraway places, thus eliminating the extensive CO2 emissions required to transport it.
Commenters from around the world who’ve seen the following video on YouTube or Reddit are anxious to know if and where they can purchase such a machine. Though the company still mainly produces larger, industrial-use machines, Blest Co. will be more than happy to hear from you. Contact them directly at [email protected].
WATCH the video below, and read more at Our World blog, United Nations University… Thanks to Kiama Robinson for the link!
Could we put a big version of this on a boat(s) and thereby make it profitable to clean up the huge floating plastic garbage patch in the ocean?
Bring it on.