Recycling, packaging and waste

Black gold in our landfills

Greg Roughan - Green Ideas editor

Tags landfill , plastic , waste

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Plastic is just solid oil – that’s the striking message from Akinori Ito of Blest Corporation, Japan, which has invented a desktop machine that turns plastic rubbish into useful fuel.

Plastic is just solid oil – that’s the striking message from Akinori Ito of Blest Corporation, Japan, which has invented a desktop machine that turns plastic rubbish into useful fuel.

Run through the machine, 1kg of plastic makes about 1L of oil, which can be used as-is, or further refined to run generators, cars or heaters.

Rather than racking up CO2 emissions by shipping oil from overseas, Akinori reckon we should be using the oil that’s sitting in our landfills and cluttering our streets.

“People don’t know that the garbage is oil,” says Akinori. “If they know it becomes oil, then they collect it.” Check out his video at www.tinyurl.com/mpl6bxv.