Why electronic goods will soon grow greener in China

IFC has invested US$1.2 million in a US-China joint venture which now offers Chinese electronic and durable good manufacturers the option of using recycled plastic resins instead of virgin resins. This is a world first which not only decreases the costs of production for Chinese manufacturers but also reduces pressure on landfills, reduces the potentially toxic incineration of plastics and reduces green house gas generation when compared to the production of virgin plastics.

Every year in China and throughout the world, millions of tons of plastic are dumped in landfills or incinerated, producing noxious air pollutants. To reduce this negative environmental impact and turn it into an economic opportunity, the IFC, through the Environmental and Social Development Department's Cleaner Technologies program (formerly the Environmental Opportunities Facility), chose in 2005 to invest in a venture that will turn the growing waste streams of plastics in China into a valuable feedstock for the electronics industry.

MBA Polymers, a California-based company, developed a unique technology to recycle almost any kind of plastic trash by separating it by plastic type. The finished products include polypropylene, high impact polystyrene and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. By investing $1.2 million equity in MBA Polymers, the IFC helped bring to China – the second-largest consumer of plastics in the world – the first technology that can recycle on a commercial scale highly mixed waste streams of high value plastics. With this support from IFC, MBA Polymers developed and now operates a joint venture plastic recycling facility in Guangzhou, China that recycles 40,000-ton of plastic per year.

The plant currently recycles plastic scrap imported from Europe and Japan but MBA Polymers expects to start recycling Chinese plastic scrap in the next five years.

China is a strategic location because the country is fast becoming the largest producer of products made from plastic materials. Thanks to this Chinese-US joint venture, China may also emerge over time as one of the first countries in the world to manufacture "green computers". In Guangzhou, MBA Polymers has had no difficulty in selling its final products to local buyers. MBA Polymers is poised to enable major electronic and durable goods manufacturers the capability to offer fully recycled products to their customers.

Thanks to energy savings of recycling rather than creating plastic, recycling 40,000 tons of plastic per year will result in an 80,000 ton CO2 emissions reduction per year. MBA Polymers is a great example of how a new cleaner technology can be harnessed by the private sector for economic growth and environmental conservation at the same time.