Searious Business investigates advanced recycling solutions

Searious Business has been working with IUCN on the Plastic Waste Free Island (PWFI) project since 2019. Their goal is to rethink the plastic generated on islands and stopping it from leaking into the surrounding marine environment.

The project's primary focus has been reducing, reusing and recycling waste. However, not all plastics are so easily replaced or mechanically recycled. There will always remain some plastic products that require a different kind of treatment. Finding advanced recycling technologies in remote areas is the challenge Searious Business has taken on.

Plastic products such as polyolefin bags and films, LDPE items, HDPE and polystyrene cannot be handled easily. Alternative methods to convert them back to clean and valuable feedstock forms part of this challenge. Processes such as chemical recycling, pyrolysis, depolymerisation and gasification can work, and the plastic could also be used for waste-to-energy processes. Unfortunately, non-recyclable plastics are not currently dealt with by the waste management on the islands, and volumes are increasing, causing severe environmental issues. Alongside CE Delft, Searious Business will carefully analyse the waste generation, as well as evaluate and identify the most suitable technologies.

Islands are particularly vulnerable to the effects of plastic pollution, having to deal with plastic debris that washes ashore from elsewhere as well as the waste they generate themselves. On 1 June, 74 nations signed the Ocean Day Plastic Pollution Declaration presented by Antigua and Barbuda on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). The high-level thematic debate on the ocean and SDG14: Life Below Water was hosted by UN President Volkan Bozkir and calls for a legally binding treaty to combat plastic pollution.

The PWFI project was started by the IUCN, supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), as part of its global Close the Plastic Tap Programme. The vision is to create a Blueprint for Plastic Waste Free Islands so that all solutions can be scaled up and rolled out to other islands across the globe. By utilising all the state-of-art technologies available, we can halt the flow of plastic into our ocean and ensure the future prosperity of these small island nations.