Philip Lajaunie“Plastic Harvest & Upcycle”: total plastic collection and upcycling
“Plastic Harvest & Upcycle” is an immediate solution to plastic waste management and leakage in the Ocean.
SE Asia is one of the largest source of plastic pollution in waterways and oceans. Yet even when waste management is optimized with recycling separation, only the cleanest of the high-value plastics are actually upcycled. Most plastic will end up incinerated or shipped away to landfills -increasing greenhouse gases (GHG). Too often, it will be dumped in waterways and oceans.
National and local governments acknowledge the dire consequences of the plastic crisis on their citizens’ health and the various impacts on their economies, including tourism and fishing.
“Plastic Harvest & Upcycle” (PHU) is a dynamic Public-Private Partnership solution to these environmental and political pressures, harnessing local entrepreneurship and manufacturing innovations to deliver on-going cleanup and sequestration of plastic waste. The collection (“harvest”) generates supplemental income to the local informal economy, the upcycling plants create jobs and new careers, and the products supply the local urban equipment procurement.
PHU forms PPPs with local governments to collect all plastics on one end and to procure urban equipment on the other. PHU incentivizes the collection of all plastics by paying a fair market price to the people in the informal economy. Concurrently, PHU forms business ventures with local entrepreneurs to operate the upcycling plants which process the collected plastics. The treatment does not generate GHG emissions. The products are sold locally for urban equipment as part of the PPPs’ procurement agreements, as well as weatherproof construction material and commercial and outdoor furniture to the area’s real estate developers.
This model is replicable worldwide and its processing volume is scalable. The collection component varies with each country’s waste management and recycling regulations, and their level of implementation. Plastic Harvest & Upcycle adapts its operations and its end-products to the local feedstock and its volume.
PH&U is a venture by Indo-Pacific Green Growth: www.IndoPacificEnvironmentalGroup.com/#ipgg
Philip Lajaunie
