Ever wonder what happens to all the plastic we throw into our recycling bins?

In most cases it gets taken offshore for recycling or buried in landfills, somewhat defeating our good intentions of sustainable living. 

The Wellington region is keen to look at local solutions to deal with this problem of plastic waste, and has turned to clean tech company SpectioNZ to help it.

Kapiti-based SpectioNZ has an ambitious plan to develop technology to turn harmful waste products, such as plastics and bio-mass, into usable products such as fuel for power generation. 

SpectioNZ director, Mike Henare, says: “In 2003, 24,000 tonnes of plastic went into Wellington regional landfills. If you were able to capture all the stored energy from that plastic, you could generate sufficient power to meet the annual energy needs of 50,000 Wellington households”.

Mr Henare says residents are "throwing energy away".

"As far as plastics are concerned, or organics such as something as unexpected as sewage sludge, the potential to generate energy is enormous. But not only energy, there are other by-products of the process which could in reality be of greater value."
 
SpectioNZ has joined Creative HQ as the first clean technology company to be incubated. It’sr their mission to create mobile, scalable, innovative technology which is sustainable for both users and the environment.

This process  is called pyrolysis which works by heating organic material in the absence of air. As the material heats up, its carbon backbone breaks down and is converted into gas and other useful by-products.

Waste to energy technology is not new. Internationally there are few in operation, however they require huge amounts of feedstock to be economic and are multi million dollar facilities.
“Our innovation is bringing together two well proven technologies but at a scale economic to New Zealand conditions, ” says Mike.

“At a meeting recently, our Creative HQ strategist described their role as being in the engine room driving strategy and challenging conventional thinking.I think this is a good description. We joined Creative HQ to ‘get off the treadmill’ and develop more rigour and direction to our business development process.”

Kapiti and Wellington City Council are supporting SpectioNZ as is Geological and Nuclear Science, one of the region’s leading Crown Research Agencies. Grow Wellington, through its Centre of Excellence programme, facilitated these partnerships.

"We are very keen to support local solutions for smarter ways of doing things," says Centres of Excellence project manager Steven Finlay. “SpectioNZ now have the backing of strong partnerships and as a result, are leading the way in developing world changing waste to energy solutions. It is a model of a centre of excellence in practice. 

“We are now engaging national and international stakeholders to share our vision of where this clean technology can go and to forge pathways to make it happen. It is part of what we do: connecting, inspiring and facilitating.”

GNS Sciences has been commissioned to provide the next stage in the technology development by providing accurate temperature control and process logic controllers which are critical to being able to successfully build our first commercial model.

“We are exploring a number of options with local regional councils and other industry where waste to energy provides commercial benefits” says Mike.