Recycling Plastic

Nowadays, plastic is the most common material used in all production and manufacturing. The use of plastic has continuously been increasing in the last 30 years and this ever rising demand has caused almost and irreparable damage to the environment. There’s more and more plastic waste generated every day, and because it takes centuries to degrade, it can’t be solved that easily.

That’s because of the specific was plastic is build. You see, plastics are polymers, meaning they are substances formed by long chains of repeating molecules. Because these polymers are mostly synthetic, they’re easy and cheap to make, and also very resistant.

We can’t undo all of the wrong that’s been done, but we can take steps in order to minimize any further damage by always recycling. There are two methods of recycling plastic, used depending on the available facility and the type of plastic that’s getting recycled. It all starts with collecting plastic from designated recycling bins and taking them into recycling plants and facilities. There, they get separated and classified by their respective colors and materials (PET, HDPE, or a mixture) and taken to their designated sectors.

1. Mechanical recycling

This is the most common method of recycling plastic and it’s widespread all over Europe and North America. In involves cutting the plastic into small parts and grains in order to treat them more effectively. Plastic recycling machinery for mechanical recycling consists of three steps: crushing, washing and pelletizing (homogenizing the material). Once all of these steps are completed, the material that comes at the end of the recycling lane gets melted and used to produce new plastic items. Most often the material gets pressed and rolled into large sheets and sent to other factories in large rolls. The downside of this process is that the plastic that gets recycled loses its characteristics over time. This process can only be repeated a couple of times before the obtained material becomes unusable.

2. Chemical recycling

Chemical recycling, as it name says, uses a chemical process to induce the degradation of plastic. By subjecting the collected plastic garbage to extremely high heat and infusing them with decomposing catalysts, the macromolecules are broken into micro molecules called monomers in a matter of hours. These monomers are then used to create new plastic products, and they require a lot less energy than conventional mechanical recycling. This technique is very promising as the plastic that’s created from these monomers can be recycled thousands of times without losing any of its original strength and quality.