Last fall the Peoples’ Republic of China sent the U.S. recycling marketplace on its ear, by announcing a phased-in ban on scrap imports.

As with many challenges, though, the recycling ban has created new opportunities.

Boise has relied primarily on China to take its scrap, including plastics and other recyclables.

Last week the city announced its solution: a new arrangement with Renewlogy (formerly PK Clean), a Salt Lake City company that has developed proprietary technology to convert plastic into diesel fuel.

Instead of putting a crimp into Boise’s curbside recycling program, the new arrangement will expand the kinds of plastic residents can recycle.

This is all well and good, but none it makes any sense without a market for the scrap. That’s where Renewology comes in.

The Renewology system basically reverses the process by which oil is converted into plastic.

The end result is that waste plastic is reduced to its former molecular structure in liquid form, as in low sulfur diesel fuel.

The system is inexpensive, transportable and mobile. It got a test run last summer deploying solar power to recover and convert ocean waste as one of several teams organized by Plastic Ocean Project.

Read the full article on recycling by Tina Casey at TriplePundit