Plastic Waste is Mountain of Treasure

Plastic waste is scattered all over at the beach. Mountains of waste have become an issue everywhere. A project to transform these into the mountains of treasure started at the Marshall Islands, a country consisting of small islands in South Pacific.

A lot of plastic waste is disposed in landfills around the world. Plastic waste, which is hard to decompose even when buried in the soil, stays there for a long time and gives negative impacts on the environment. Many beaches almost always have waste washed ashore. Most of the waste is plastic. Sea turtles sometimes die by eating plastic bags discarded into the ocean after mistaking them for food.

To reduce plastic waste, an attempt was launched to turn plastic waste into oil. The raw material of plastic is oil after all. Therefore, if only plastic is sorted and collected, the waste can be converted back into oil.

The government officials of the Republic of Marshall Islands learned that a Japanese company called Blest Co., Ltd. develops a plastic-to-oil converting machine and asked Mr. Akinori Ito, CEO of the company, for cooperation. Mr. Ito took the machine to the Marshall Islands. With this machine, one kilogram of plastic waste is converted into about one liter of oil, which can run a car.

Learning that waste is transformed into oil, the people on the island changed their attitudes. People began to sort and collect waste rather than simply disposing them. Children take the lead and pick up waste. A mountain of waste has become a mountain of treasure.

There should be another waste that will be valuable if it can be recycled. Any ideas?

(February 23, 2012 10:27 AM)