Findings, Interpretation and Evaluation
1. Waste collection and exports
Currently, the UK plastic waste collection companies are collecting the plastic waste from the UK taxpayers, the same as many other European countries, and delivering the waste by ships through Hong Kong to China. Why through Hong Kong? Because China has lifted the standards for the types of plastic which they are accepting, and which do not allow them to import any unsorted plastic. The UK has extremely poor plastic sorting standards, and very often, the UK recycling companies are stretching the rules to get rid of their mess. Obviously, all low standard plastic waste ends into a landfill or another disposal facility, which causes the Chinese environment, and health issues for the population in the area where the pollution has been done. The Chinese government decided to ban the plastic exports from the UK; the UK, instead of looking for alternatives to recycle the plastic by themselves, found the route through Hong Kong. In that little gap, Hong Kong has lower standard regulations, so will accept the UK materials, move them to China, and China is still getting polluted by the UK waste companies.
2. Waste impact on environment and low paid manpower health
Research shows that European countries are the biggest plastic waste polluters, and at the same time, are the cleanest countries on the earth. The reason why they are doing so well is that more developed countries prefer to keep their own garden clean and export all their waste to third world countries such as China and several countries in Africa. Within this process are some benefits and also negative impacts. China had found a way at least to recycle 48 % of the plastic to packaging materials, which are going into the market for a second lap and give China an economical push as the largest plastic packaging provider. By using recycled plastic, available at a lower price than virgin packaging made from raw materials, obviously results in a reduction of the use of raw material resources.
The dark side of this business is low paid employees, working without proper PPE, who end up suffering from different illnesses. Also, there is significant air pollution around these plastic recycling factories, which affects the population living nearby these factories, as the recycling technologies are not well equipped with high-quality filters and the latest technical advances. However, there is a problem of providing well-sorted plastic waste, which would fit the recycling quality standards to be recyclable for second use packaging. All these low-quality plastic deliveries are ending up in landfill and rivers, which are delivering all the waste back to the starting point and does not give any long-term solution. It is even embarrassing that developed countries are acting in such a short-sighted way, with their short term solution of hiding their waste in someone else’s garden. Eventually, all this “hidden” waste returns to its origin. Of course, on this occasion, it takes a lot more time to get your own damage back, but it is coming slowly. That’s why there are established companies and organizations that are cleaning up the oceans and rivers. One of them is called “Water Witch” which is based in Liverpool and is completely funded by charity donations. That means society is paying double for the same waste without results, and the 500-billion-dollar plastic waste exporting business each year keep shifting waste around without results, and on top of that, polluting the environment because of the emissions from the delivery processes.
3. Plastic recycling system which can recycle any quality plastic materials
An average plastic recycling complex would need one thousand square meters of land for their operations. The complex would be half-automatized with four or five operators required to follow the systems indicators and processes on the computer screens. The plastic waste can be delivered straight to the shredder containers, where all plastic would be shredded to a smaller fraction of its original mass before it is moved into the induction system, and extracts the diesel, gas, mazut, and coal dust. After, the diesel and gas filtering process follow, which at the end, will give the right octane diesel for electric power generation and gas, which can be transferred straight to the main national grid system for home heating purposes.
The remaining components, like mazut and coal dust, can be collected and sold to the road work companies as pigment for road-building purposes. Out of one hundred tons of plastic waste, we are capable of producing 40 to 60% diesel, 15% gas, 10% mazut component, and 0.1% coal dust, depending on the plastic quality. Overall, one plastic recycling factory is capable on a weekly basis of recycling two hundred tons of plastic. Yearly, that would be 10400 tons per year, which could produce 4000 to 6000 thousand tons of diesel, 1500 cubic meters of gas, 1000 tons of mazut, and 100 kg of coal dust.
All these processes would not give off any smells or emissions, as the induction system does not generate any air pollution, because all the gas is collected and transformed into the grid. The emission process starts from diesel transformation into the electric power, but with high-quality filters and returning part of the gas back into the system, we are capable of achieving Euro car four emissions levels, which would be equivalent to a Volvo S40 diesel car. The plant will be able to generate approximately 41,600 megawatts or 41.6 million kilowatts on a yearly basis, which will go for sale for £ 0.06 pounds per one kilowatt. The project’s full return, including wages and running costs, is expected in a fourteen to fifteen-month time frame, and the project costs are estimated at 3.5 million pounds for the initial investment.
Machinery checks are made every six months, and capital recovery maintenance works are going to be every two years to change shredders and other rolling parts to avoid more expensive maintenance repair work. In this project, there may be concerns about emissions at the electric power generation process, but that will significantly lower than gas, coal, or any other diesel plant because this system will have an additional filtering system that is not available at standard technology power plants. In the end, 67% (Appendix4) of the energy sector is supplied by fossil fuel power plants. This system obviously does not solve all the problems but brings us closer to a more acceptable balance between waste pollution and energy sourcing options.
4. Population in the UK and plastic consumption on person
There are interesting facts about per capita plastic waste in the UK. The current UK population is 60,040,089 people. This number of people in the UK is polluting 2,260,000 tons of plastic packaging annually, which, expressed in kilograms, will be 2.26 billion kg per year.
That means one person, in the span of one year’s time, is throwing away 34.22 kg of plastic packaging, or on a weekly basis, 0.66 kg of plastic waste.
According to these calculations, we were able to produce the same data about how much waste is produced in the largest one thousand cities and towns in the UK. Based on that data, we can work out some numbers on how many factories would need to be built to break even with the current plastic pollution rate. London, obviously as the capital, would require around twenty-nine similar projects, and Birmingham would be the next closest follower. The rest of the information is available in the supporting material.
In summary, to break even with the current national plastic pollution problem, the country would require 218 plastic recycling factories across the country and could be divided between seventy cities. For example, each city would have three factories, which would require an investment of 10.5 million pounds for each city council to solve the plastic waste problem. This investment would begin to provide a return in fourteen months’ time. If we look at the entire country, the projects would require 762.76 million pounds investment in total and would create almost nine hundred well-paid job positions with an average annual wage of £ 30,000 pounds.
The full capacity of these projects would be able to provide 872 thousand to 1,308 thousand tons of diesel, which could be transformed into 9.07 million Megawatt-hours. That will cover 3.5% of the national energy sector needs, based on 3.9 Megawatt-hours needed to be produced annually per one consumer. This nationwide project will also produce 327,000 cubic meters of gas, 218,000 tons of mazut pigment for the road development, and 21,8 tons of coal dust, which can also be used in the road development projects. This project would benefit the energy sector, heating sector, road work sector, and reduce outsourcing for raw material for these sectors. Also, there would not be any transportation costs for waste exports, and all financial activities would happen within the country’s market and support the UK economy in a positive way. Within a short time, a factory could also be designed and built, which would provide all the necessary parts for the machinery in the UK territory as well; this could potentially double the positive impact on employment and financial benefits.
5. Conclusion and future research
5.1 Conclusion
On this occasion, this project has raised more value by using Soft Systems Methodology and Innovation and Sustainability criteria because these areas helped to investigate the project in more depth from different angles and identified important details for the project success. Moreover, it will help to develop future projects which are streaming to be the bigger scale projects and might change and improve the existing waste management system regarding plastic recycling standards, waste exportation, and dumping, as is the case in the third world countries. The future project has a great opportunity to build a sustainable future for the next generation and provide economic benefits until alternative material(s) for packaging will be made available to the market. The research shows that the project management life cycle can be well integrated with Soft System Methodology, Innovation Diamond methodology sustainability criteria, and regulations. The complicated area might be the sustainability part as there is still a lot of work to be done to create more tools to identify if the project is sustainable or not. But for a start, this paper has slightly developed four sustainable factors with sub factors as a checklist which could be used to develop the idea to determine if the project meets the factor or not and if not, then give a starting point for developing an idea on why the project doesn’t meet the factor and how the project could meet the sub factor requirements. Also, during the process of developing projects, it is important to project some maturity because that can improve the project processes and develop more efficient approaches. For example, the use of IT backup to reduce the human mistake factors and see the project clearer for project owners and project management team.
The plastic waste recycling development project has a bright future, it is very new and will be very challenging to launch for the first time in the UK as this project involves many environmental aspects and regulations which should be sorted out through many different institutions and government departments, but after the first project launching, the project base will become more mature. That will help develop the concept and selling point for other organizations and governments as the example will be in front of them. Then, project owners will be able to move to the next phase and develop a wider ambition project to tackle the environmental plastic pollution problem. The research data shows that the United Kingdom would need only 218 plastic waste recycling factories, which would be able to break-even current plastic waste pollution rates. At the same time, this project turns the problem into the solution and resources which are outsourced from other countries. This is a win-win situation from all angles: environmental, economic, energy, heating, road developments, and sustainable future for the next generation. The project nationwide will require approximately 763 million investments and will return the investment in 32 months’ time.
5.2 Future research
From a theoretical point of view, there should be more attention paid to sustainability and integration of sustainability with project management life cycle and innovation. So far, sustainability can be noticed by the general standards, ISO standards, and factors which are supporting the vision for sustainable projects. However, it would be good to develop this area in a more detailed toolbox or structure to follow in order to determine if the project is really sustainable or just represents the idea of sustainability because, in some factors, the project might be sustainable whereas, in others, it may not be that sustainable. That is why this section requires a more detailed checkbox system to evaluate the margin of sustainability clearly. If you look at the project development from the point of waste management system improvements, there will always be development opportunities as the waste sector does not only include plastics; there are e-waste problems and other environmentally unfriendly factors. There are many companies that are trying to build better future, and Infinite 8 Cycle company is not any different and is ambitious enough to look into more complex projects like recycling and dividing all types of waste available into sources that could be reused for other purposes. There are already some technologies developed to recycle all household waste and are getting tested in one of the Bulgarian waste sites.