This photo taken on May 9, 2018 shows pile of plastic garbage occupying a canal in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. (TANG CHHIN SOTHY / AFP)

PHNOM PENH - In a small workshop made out of corrugated iron sheets, a handful of people work to give unwanted plastic a new life. The plant, located in Tbong Khmum province’s Tbong Khmum district, is the brainchild of Khun Sive, an NGO worker with a fascination for green energy.

Due to its convenience, there is a strong tendency to overuse plastic. In places like Cambodia, plastic products pile up on the side of the road, posing a risk to the environment and people’s health.

I was inspired to produce diesel from plastic waste after reading about success stories for green energy production in Japan.

Khun Sive, an NGO worker in Cambodia

The sight of heaps of plastic waste on the side of the road is what motivated Sive to start his workshop.

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“I was inspired to produce diesel from plastic waste after reading about success stories for green energy production in Japan,” said Sive, who is from the Chikor commune.

Sive was encouraged by the organization he was working for at the time to start researching about recycling plastic.

“Then I decided to use YouTube to find out how to produce diesel from plastic waste,” said the 41-year-old man, who dropped out from school at Grade 4 due to family problems.

Sive spent over a year learning and experimenting to refine the process, and opened his workshop in August 2018.

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He said the system to produce diesel from plastic waste can be broken down into three basic steps – chemical decomposition, filtration, and purification.

In his factory, plastic bottles are fed to a reactor and heated. When the plastic evaporates, the condensed vapour is collected and put through a purification process to turn it into diesel.

Sive’s story has captured the hearts of many in a nation where local inventions rarely fail to make headlines and go viral on social media.