Abstract

Dr Mike Biddle calls himself the “Garbage Man” and thinks of garbage piles as ‘above ground mines’. Less than 10% of plastic trash is recycled — compared to almost 90% of metals — because of the massively complicated waste management issues, the problem of finding and sorting the different kinds. Biddle has developed a patented 30-step plastics recycling system that includes magnetically extracting metals, shredding the plastics, sorting them by polymer type and producing graded pellets to be reused in industry – a process that takes less than a tenth of the energy required to make virgin plastic from crude oil Dr. Michael Biddle, was selected to receive the prestigious 2010 Economist Innovation Award for Energy and the Environment. His company MBA Polymers has achieved a plastics recycling solution for sustainability and has been selected as a Going Green Silicon Valley Global 200 Winner.