Transportation costs, waste plastics

In particular, as far as the plastic catalytic degradation is concerned, there are various possible scenarios. In large urban areas the best approach probably is to build a plastic waste pyrolysis plant in an acceptable near area at not to great distance, in order to minimize transport cost of the plastic waste. In that case, safety and environmental concerns of such a new plant should first be denied with satisfactorily before the new plant can get the go-ahead. Near refineries however, the best approach might be to co-feed plastic waste with oil fractions into refinery crackers, or even have a unit of pure thermal pyrolysis first with the produced wax-type fraction to be upstaged in another reactive refinery process. In the first case of co-feeding, a lot of research has to be carried out, addressing aspects of defluidization mainly, before an alteration of a process of the scale of FCC units can go ahead. 

As a consequence of their low density, plastics cause a greater visual impact on disposal than many other materials. Similarly, the light weight of plastics is the origin of important limitations on the recycling of plastic wastes, due to increased collection and transportation costs. Thus, to... 

In contrast to this example, we can say that the use of recycled plastic waste is limited by the difficulty in transporting it as little as possible, sorting it for the lowest possible cost and regenerating the material with as few operations and additives as possible. Another limiting factor is that it is often difficult for a transformer to obtain recycled plastics of consistent and clearly known quahty. 

Making plastics, of course, uses fossil fuel resources and invariably creates emissions using plastics and especially disposing of postconsumer plastic waste has an associated environmental cost. This is by no means a phenomenon unique to plastics. It is common to all manufacturing and service industries. The cost is routinely paid globally, for instance, in using oil for transportation. Transportation is critical for the functioning of society, and the cost indeed is a reasonable and politically acceptable one. The question then is Do the benefits provided by the use of plastics justify the environmental costs associated with their use ... 

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