Every year, 600 billion plastic bottles are used across the globe, and pollution from plastic waste has been hitting headlines for years. However, Dr Vivek Tandon, CEO and Co-Founder of perPETual, has a different vision of used plastic. “Isn’t it crazy,” said Dr Tandon, “that dirty, toxic crude oil mined out of the ground is referred to as “black gold” whereas plastic bottles used just once to contain clean drinking water are referred to as waste after just one use? We at perPETual see used plastic bottles not as waste, but as a valuable resource which can be efficiently transformed to replace conventional oil-based chemicals. We have developed the world’s only known profitable, commercial scale process which can help reduce the world’s plight of waste plastic bottles by making it highly profitable to recycle them.”
Using breakthrough, patented technology, perPETual has developed a depolymerisation process to break down plastics back into esters (the base chemical building block to make poly(esters)). perPETual’s process uses 86% less water and 75% less energy than the conventional method of producing esters from crude oil. The esters produced by perPETual are currently used to produce high-quality, sustainable filament yarns which are used by many of the worlds leading clothing and apparel brands, as can be found on the perPETual website. Many of these brands, impressed with the high quality of yarn produced, have expressed intentions of using 100% sustainable polyester made from used plastic bottles in their products in the future.
“I am so pleased to have crossed this milestone with our partner in India,” said Dr Tandon. “To date, perPETual has maintained a low profile, but due to customer demand for more product and the successful scaling up of our process, we now seek both financial and industrial partners to expand our process globally. Together we can make a material difference to our world.”
