So, has anyone heard of TDP? If you have, the acronym won’t slow you down one iota. If you haven’t, I consider it a tad worrying. TDP- Thermal depolymerization process sounds about as interesting as watching a paint blog dry though may, if I am built for boldness, save humanity. Simply put TDP is a waste treatment process that is incredibly efficient and has three by-products, high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.

The process uses well established technology, indeed the inventor Paul Baskis filed patents for the process after a brain wave to evolve a clunky inefficient precursor process. The technology is identical, the genius is in the application. Presented with the prospect, the most popular response is ‘what’s the catch?’, in this case it almost seems like there isn’t one. “Thermal depolymerization, says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: “That means for every 100 Btus (British thermal unit) in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process.” He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics.

The process is genuinely revolutionary, testing has proven that any carbon based waste can be used and irrespective of it’s input toxicity, the end products are pure and extremely useful. “So far, says Terry Adams, nothing hazardous comes out from any feedstock we try.”By varying the feedstock and cooking/coking times it is possible to select any number of relatively benign and industrially valuable chemicals. “That’s what’s so great about making water a friend,” says Appel. “The hydrogen in water combines with the chlorine in PVC to make it safe. If you burn PVC [in a municipal-waste incinerator], you get dioxin—very toxic.”

So, the catch. As far as it’s possible to ascertain, there is no procedural catch but there does seem to be a political catch. This process was patented by Baskis in 1994 after the first Gulf war but long before the second. Even the most politically illiterate amongst us must recognise that oil control dictates much of the foreign policy of the G8, turn off the lightswitch and civilisation shall revert to savagery within a week of the supermarkets closing. This is how the greasy politicos excuse many of their ‘questionable’ actions.

It is undeniable that our reliance on hydrocarbon fuels is having a severe and detrimental effect on the environment but more pressing is energy security, TDP however, has several unintended benefits, for example converting all the U.S. agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually This waste is no longer polluting and is now useful. And, as the Yoo Ess is importing around 4.2 billion barrels of oil per year, their security and supply is assured. So why, fourteen years after the patenting of this process is the empire still holding a gun to the head of the arabs for ’security’? Other environmental considerations- if you incinerate waste, why not TDP it? Instead of filling the air with dioxins why not find yourselves with barrels of lovely oil and a bucketful of exotic minerals. Looking further ahead, carbon capture may not just mean trapping nasties in trees, it may be a filter attached to your exhaust that, when full, will give you an extra tank of fuel. Indeed, pretty much every landfill site has the potential to become a minable resource

For many years, the oft maligned ‘greenies’ have been calling for decentralised production of energy and processing of waste, now it seems probable that without political interference there won’t be a town dump, each town will have it’s own refinery. Appel is certain that the process is scalable— ‘Plants can sprawl over acres and handle 4,000 tons of waste a day or be “small enough to go on the back of a flatbed truck” and handle just one ton daily.’ Given the political, social, environmental and financial instability caused by energy production and use, is it not time that we stopped mitigating the consequences and start using a better paradigm?