Mobile Plastic Recycling: A portable processor to repurpose ocean waste.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa

While many people were trying to find ways to stay busy during the COVID-19 pandemic, Patrick Simpson, owner of PKS Consulting, was studying ways to save the environment. He was investigating the issue of marine debris--and plastic in particular--when he decided to see if he could find a solution to help keep Alaska's coastline clean.

"I spent my time combing through Google Scholar articles and searching scientific journals and peer-reviewed science publications to figure out how to put my arms around the problem," he recalls. "When looking at the state of current technology, I discovered three themes: assessment, collection, and utilization of plastic ocean waste."

Simpson put together funding proposals focused on the collection and utilization aspects. Some envisioned the use of heavy-lift drone aircraft that could carry up to 1,000 pounds of waste off a remote beach. The idea that gained traction, though, is a mobile system to recycle ocean waste into plastic lumber.

In 2019, Simpson's mobile plastic processing system earned funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency's Small Business Innovation Research program, and Simpson also recently received funding through the US Department of Agriculture to use the same type of technology to recycle a different set of plastics.

The recycling system, housed in a 53-foot trailer, had its initial pilot demonstration last fall in Palmer. The shakedown tour goes to Seward and Soldotna this spring. Plastic waste fits through a slot in the side of the trailer, gets shredded into pellets, and is pressed into a flow molding machine. The output is a material shaped like boards or other construction products.

Because the unit is mobile, it can be used anywhere, saving communities the cost of the typical hub-and-spoke approach, in which they are required to ship their waste to another location for processing. This is especially important for rural Alaska communities, which can simply stockpile their waste at a single location until the processing system arrives.

"This concept was really emotionally driven," says Simpson, a fourth-generation Alaskan who grew up in Cordova. "My father and brother are commercial fishermen, and though get seasick on the water, I've spent a lot of time on these beaches. Seeing them littered with plastic and Styrofoam really concerns me because heavy storm tides break it up into smaller pieces that become microplastics. These make their way into our food supply, so we need...