– thousands of jobs expected

GREEN Link Renewable Energy, a United States-based company, has expressed an interest in converting Guyana’s plastic waste into fuel, and will soon submit a formal proposal.

Company officials pitched this idea during a meeting with Minister of Public Works, Bishop Juan Edghill on Monday.

Minister Edghill said he was pleased to hear that not only will plastics be less of a pollutant through this initiative, but it will also provide thousands of jobs to locals.

This initiative will also help the country advance towards a renewable energy state, he added.

Minister Edghill advised officials to engage the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest), the Ministry of Local Government, and the Director of Solid Waste Management.

The team, which comprises Messrs. Derek Castaneda, Joshua Somwaru, Bruce Gold, Robert Castaneda and Jason Baboolal, is expected to meet with local authorities during the week, and draft and submit an official business proposal for consideration.

BACKGROUND

Green Link Renewable Energy was created in 2014 as a renewable energy development and finance firm. It focuses on waste-to-energy, plastic-to-fuel opportunities, and securing capital for projects. The firm’s founders worked together on a number of renewable energy, waste-to-energy, and regional transmission engagements in Latin America prior to forming Green Link.

The firm, which is based in the Southeastern United States, is dedicated to the search for more effective, yet proven and bankable zero-waste solutions, technologies, and partners. They have partnered with Renewlogy, a global leader in plastic-to-fuel technology, to turn streams of waste plastic into valuable fuel resources.

The company’s knowledge, experience, and commitment to benefiting the planet has driven it to grow its team, which now includes representatives in Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Israel.

A 2016 CNN article, titled “Millions of tons of plastic garbage pollute our world. What if we could turn them into fuel instead?” explored the plastic-to-fuel idea.

It was articulated that the idea was posited by a team of scientists from the University of California, at Irvine (UCI), and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC) in China.
The technique involves breaking down the plastic to a molecular level to turn it into a readily usable fuel similar to diesel.

The source material is the most common type of plastic, polyethylene, which is predicted to reach a global annual demand of nearly 100 million metric tons by 2018.

Polyethylene is used to produce various types of packaging, from bags to bottles, but it doesn’t degrade easily, and can linger in the environment for even hundreds of years. Along with other types of plastics, it pollutes waterways and oceans (one large cluster is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) and often gets eaten by birds and marine life.

An easy system to turn used plastic into fuel could help relieve the burden on the environment of a material that loses 95% of its value after one use cycle.