Invited Talk: Chemical Recycling of Polyethylene Waste By Oxidative Degradation

Today, only 9% of plastic packaging gets recycled worldwide. The rest goes to landfills, incinerators, and oceans. At BioCellection, we aim to protect our environment through creating innovative recycling processes for currently unrecyclable post-consumer waste plastics by converting this waste into virgin quality building blocks for sustainable supply chains. Our process is developed for polyethylene, which is over a third of all plastics produced globally. We are currently focused on LDPE and HDPE flexible plastics - think grocery bags, bubble wraps, trash bags, retail packaging, food wraps, etc.

We have developed a thermal oxidation chemical recycling process that enables polymers to be broken into lower molecular weight species with oxygenated terminals, forming valuable organic acid compounds that can be harvested, purified, and used to make products. Compounds created from our process include succinic acid, glutaric acid, adipic acid, pimelic acid, suberic acid, and azelaic acid. These are the first chemical intermediates made from post-consumer waste! Today's intermediates are produced using petroleum, and they’re essential in the production of performance materials, solvents, coatings, and more. Our innovation unlocks the potential of using plastic waste to replace fossil fuel as a resource for sustainable supply chains.