Timor Leste to become world’s first plasticneutral nation

KUALA LUMPUR: In a region where seas are awash with trash, Timor Leste is set to become the world’s first country to recycle all its plastic waste after it teamed up with Australian researchers yesterday to build a revolutionary recycling plant.

The US$40 million (RM167.1 million) plant will ensure that no plastic, once used in the Southeast Asian nation, would become waste, but would instead be turned into new products.

Dili said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Australia’s Mura Technology to establish a non-profit called Respect that will run the plastic recycling plant, expected to launch by the end of 2020.

“This is a small country where we can make a statement — making the whole country the first to be plastic neutral, in a region where there is the largest pollution of marine life,” said Thomas Maschmeyer, co-inventor of the recycling technology to be used in the new plant.

“Plastic, if you don’t dispose of it well, is a terrible thing (but) if you can dispose of it well, it’s a great thing.”

More than eight million tonnes of plastics are dumped in the world’s ocean each year, scientists say — about a truckload per minute. China, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand are among the top culprits, waste experts say.

Aside from the impact this has on human health and wildlife, the 21-strong Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group said it cost the region’s tourism, fishing and shipping industries about US$1.3 billion a year.

Timor Leste, with a population of just 1.3 million, generates about 70 tonnes of plastic waste each day, most of which is collected from beaches and urban areas, then burned in the open.

Maschmeyer said the new plant would use chemical technology to quickly turn plastic waste into liquid or gas without adding mineral oil, which no other recycler can do as well.

“The issue with plastic is what you do when you’ve finished using that product,” said Maschmeyer, who teaches at the University of Sydney.

“In our case we can chemically recycle it and put it back into the circular economy.”