An engineer scoops a handful of tiny pellets out of a stainless-steel canister at a manufacturing plant in the Netherlands and rolls them around in his hand.
Many waste items provide important value before being tossed into a bin. Discarded plastic products, for example, originally serve as packaging to keep school lunches fresh, lightweight bottles for efficiently transporting fresh water to hard-to-reach areas, containers for soaps and detergents that facilitate hygiene – and much more.
Plastic roads and buildings, the influence of energy and petrochemicals in geopolitics, and chemical and molecular recycling processes that could create a truly circular economy for plastic products were just a few of the topics discussed at AFPM’s 44th International Petrochemical Conference (IPC) in San Antonio last week.
As petrochemicals and recycling advancements give old plastic new life over and over again—from shoes and clothes made of recycled plastic recovered from the ocean, to plastic bottles being chemically recycled into fuel and a raw material to make new petrochemicals—what it means to “recycle” is changing right before our eyes.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) filed a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, challenging the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) dismissal of its complaint against the unlawful surcharge imposed by BNSF Railway Company on DOT-111 tanks cars carrying crude oil.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Statement by American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) President and CEO Chet Thompson on the announcement of the U.S. State Department approval of the cross-border permit to advance Keystone XL pipeline.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers’ (AFPM) President Chet Thompson remarks on the Obama Administration’s decision to deny the permits needed to complete the last leg of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
HOUSTON — The dog days of summer typically bring one or two hurricanes that lash the U.S. Gulf Coast. The punch of these storms, with their powerful winds and heavy rains, often has the potential to curb production at Gulf Coast refineries that together churn out nearly 50 percent of U.S. motor fuels and are crucial to our economy.