This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s been almost a decade since Jocelyn Doucet first experimented with recycling plastic waste in a microwave. Now he says the technology derived from those early efforts will make it possible to produce plastic almost exclusively from recycled materials. “We’re consuming more and more plastics,” says the Quebec-based engineer and founder of Pyrowave, a company pioneering microwave-based plastic recycling technology. “Yet there are not that many solutions to address the end-of-life problem, and this is what we’re proposing.” Get Grist in your inbox Always free, always fresh Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy The technology is so promising it has caught the attention of French tire giant Michelin. Last year, the company announced a partnership with Pyrowave to build a microwave recycling system for tires. It will be the first time Doucet’s technology is used on a commercial scale. Most recycling in Canada today is mechanical, where plastics are shredded before being melted down to make new, usually lower-quality, products. For the process to be viable, the stream of plastics entering […]
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