Putting old plastic bottles to a profitable use

SIR – Sean Bellew (Letters, February 13) need look no further than Finland for an idea of how refunded deposits on plastic bottles might be administered.

Practically every Finnish supermarket has a recycling area with a large machine into which bottles (plastic and glass) and cans are fed. The machine can take them as fast as you can feed them in and automatically detects if a refund is due. Once all the bottles and cans are in, one need only touch a button and a ticket is then printed for the amount due, which can be spent in the shop. It does not matter where the bottles are from as they can be recycled in any machine. Any nonrefundable bottles or cans are directed to general recycling automatically.

Drinks manufacturers in Scandinavia have embraced this system wholeheartedly, as have some enterprising children who offer to “help” unsuspecting tourists dispose of their empties. Andrew Walley Etwall, Derbyshire SIR – Sarah Knapton reports (February 11) that Warwick University has developed a new process, called pyrolysis, “which can recycle 100 per cent of plastic waste”.

Plastic Energy, which has a technology team in Britain and two industrial plants in Spain, is using a process called thermal anaerobic conversion which pre-dates the university’s process and has already converted millions of tonnes of nonrecyclable contaminated plastic waste into hydrocarbon products such as fuels and oils. Our plants can produce up to 19,000 litres of fuel from 20 tonnes of plastic feedstock.

Earlier this year pilot Jeremy Rowsell made history by flying a light aircraft more than 500 miles from Sydney to Melbourne, Australia, using conventional fuel blended with 10 per cent fuel manufactured by Plastic Energy from plastic waste. Carlos Monreal President and CEO, Plastic Energy London E20