Cancún company turning plastic waste into fuel

CANCÚN, Mexico (CN) — The unchecked development in Mexico’s star Caribbean destination has helped produce one unsightly factoid that tourists never see on the brochure: Cancún produces more than 330 tons of plastic waste per day.

And just like elsewhere in the world, the majority of this waste is destined to contribute to the global crisis of plastics pollution. 

But one Cancún company is determined to make a difference — and a profit — by turning that waste into gasoline and other petroleum-based fuels. 

Petgas uses the process known as pyrolysis to convert plastic waste that would most likely end up polluting the environment into six different kinds of fuel. 

In addition to gasoline, the compact plant just outside the city center turns plastic from soda bottles, PVC piping, face masks, supermarket bags, styrofoam and even old appliances like televisions and oscillating fans into high-octane gasoline, diesel, kerosene, butane, propane and paraffin. 

“You look at this bottle and you see a bottle, but if you have more experience with plastics, you call it PET,” said Petgas CEO Pablo Fabian Chico, holding up a bottle of water from the Coca-Cola-owned brand Ciel. 

“This reveals the complexity of recycling. Most labels are made of polypropylene. The caps are high density polyethylene. In some cases, even the ring of the cap will be a different plastic. So just imagine the classification of this one bottle. This complicates plastics recycling.”

This complication is the primary reason that recycling has repurposed only a meager 9% of all the plastics ever produced, according to the United Nations. It makes the separation necessary for traditional recycling difficult and cost inefficient.

Through an innovative process of pyrolysis by distillation patented by Petgas’ head of technology Jesús Edgar Padilla Rodríguez, the company has been able to overcome this barrier to recycling. 

And the fuels it produces are of a higher quality than those made from crude oil, since many impurities have already been removed in the production of the plastics Petgas uses as raw material. 

Petgas gasoline is free of heavy metals and contains just a fifth of the sulfur found in other premium gasolines. 

“Just think of being able to transform this product that’s going to last a thousand years into a high-octane, high-performance fuel,” said Chico. 

But fuel isn’t the only thing the company produces from plastic, according to Chico.

“We also turn plastic into food,” he said, surrounded by 10-foot heaps of discarded detergent bottles and abandoned children’s toys at the company’s collections and processing center. “We’re transforming it into an equitable energy.”

In addition to the plant’s 70 employees, he extended Petgas’ socioeconomic benefit to the people who sell the raw material directly to the company, many of whom arrive at the center on cargo tricycles filled with plastics collected from the streets and garbage cans and depend on the income for their daily sustenance. 

The Cancún plant has the capacity to process up to 8,800 pounds of plastic a day, which comes out to over 630 gallons of gasoline with an average octane rating of 102. Premium gasoline on the market averages 91-94 octane. 

Still, that only accounts for half a percent of the plastic waste produced in the city each day.

Quintana Roo, the state in which Cancún is located, prohibited single-use plastics in 2019, but the law, which was implemented in stages, was put on hold in response to the coronavirus pandemic and has yet to reach its intended potential. Environmentalists in the state are calling for it to be reinstated in full. 

“During the pandemic, plastic waste has actually increased in Quintana Roo, from disposable items to the face masks we have to use, which have plastics in them,” said Alejandra Cornejo, an environmentalist and director of social responsibility at Colibrí Boutique Hotels in nearby Tulum. 

Petgas’ process has the potential to make a significant dent in the problem of plastics contamination, both in Quintana Roo and elsewhere in the world, said Cornejo. It’s all a question of capacity.

Pyrolysis is not new, but the most common method is done via catalysis, a chemical reaction that makes the process too expensive to be cost-effective. Padilla’s patented distillation method has made pyrolysis economically viable, and Petgas is now looking to expand.

“This could be a real game changer,” said Agustín García, a potential investor from El Paso, Texas, who visited the plant with business parter Carlos Corral with plans of funding plants in the U.S. “It’s now more efficient and affordable to help the planet using this material that is widely available.”

Corral, who is from Chihuahua, expressed “pride in this 100% Mexican technology that has the power to help the environment.” 

With another fully operative plant in California and more on the way in seven other states in Mexico, as well as Mexico City, CEO Chico said Petgas is on its way to increasing capacity in order to make that change. He was also in talks with potential investors in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. 

“Plastic is like a naughty child that always wanted to be energy, but nobody appreciated it,” said Chico. “If we don’t catch it and turn it into what it always wanted to be, it’ll just end up back in the environment, killing animals and being eaten by us. Petgas wants to help it reach that potential.”

Correction: An earlier version of this piece stated that Cancún produces more than 66 tons of plastic per day.

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