Back on July 7, 2011, I wrote a post titled “Does Your Innovation Team “Focus and Finish.” I was talking to one of my colleagues this week, Dan Lamone (one of our guest post authors and current MBA student, The Ohio State University, Fisher School of Business,class of 2018) about a meeting he was in and the topic of focusing on the right project came up. He used one of my ... [Click to Continue...]
Recycle and Disposal of Plastic Food Packaging Waste 13: the need for flexibility in an increasingly complex world.
Guest Post by Dr. Robert (Bob) Humphreys History teaches that very large, complex human organizations and systems tend to be inflexible, preferring resistance to evolution when confronted with change. Waste plastic recycling systems and the laws and regulations that govern them are an excellent example. Most plastic in municipal solid waste (MSW) is used food packaging. ... [Click to Continue...]
Recycle and Disposal of Plastic Food Packaging Waste 12: Thermal Technologies 3
Guest Post by Dr. Robert (Bob) Humphreys In Post 11 in this series, we gave a short overview of plastic-to-syngas, one of several technologies for conversion of waste plastic to useful products. Syngas is a valuable product because it can be burned as a fuel or can be converted into liquid fuels (diesel, gasoline) or methanol that, in turn, can be converted to a broad ... [Click to Continue...]
Recycle and Disposal of Plastic Food Packaging Waste 11: Thermal Technologies 2
Guest Post by Dr. Robert (Bob) Humphreys In previous posts, we have discussed some of the trends in packaging that complicate the lives of the waste plastic recycling industry. Only 9.4% of the plastic in municipal solid waste (MSW) was recycled in 2014, based on data from the EPA (ref. 1), leaving about 30 million tons of waste plastic in MSW that is either landfilled or ... [Click to Continue...]
Recycle and Disposal of Plastic Food Packaging Waste 10: Thermal Technologies
Guest Post by Dr. Robert (Bob) Humphreys In the previous nine posts on plastic recycling and disposal, we focused on two approaches that require sorting: plastic composting; and separation of plastics that have commercial value in reuse. As we have seen, these methods do not provide a comprehensive solution to the waste plastic problem now and are unlikely to do so in the ... [Click to Continue...]