Plastic Recycling Information
Plastic recycling is the process of using scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing it into useful products, sometimes into something entirely different than its original form. An estimated 13 billion plastic bottles alone are disposed every year but only 2.7 billion plastic bottles are recycled a year. By recycling one plastic bottle you are not only conserving enough energy to light a 60W light bulb for six hours, you are also reducing the world's dependency to oil and CO2 emissions caused by fossil fuel use.
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Plastic Usage
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Plastic is used to make bottles for fizzy drinks and other beverages, containers for food, plastic grocery bags, furniture and many other common items found in every household. About 11 percent of household waste is plastic, and plastic bottles make 40 percent of it. Recycled plastic is used to make fleece clothing, fiber filling for sleeping bags, fencing and garden furniture among many other items.
Recycling Plastic
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All plastic to be recycled needs to be washed and separated based on the resin identification codes printed on the bottom of every plastic product. Two of the most easily recyclable plastic are PET, which includes plastic beverage bottles, and HDPE, which includes containers for milk and plastic bags, coded as number 1 and 2. In many places, many plastic beverage bottles, especially water, juice and soft drink bottles, are redeemable for cash. Remember to move the caps from the bottles because the caps are made of a different plastic type than the bottles. In addition, many grocery store nowadays have recycling bins for plastic bags.
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Advantages
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Recycling plastics eliminates the need to produce new plastic items. Plastic is made using oil, so inclining need to produce plastic items will conserve non-renewable fossil fuels, reduce energy consumption and reduce CO2 emissions. Because plastic products take up a lot of space and do not break down in landfills, recycling them also reduces the amount of solid waste going to landfills.
Challenges
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There are many different types of plastics, and only the same type of plastics can be recycled together. New technologies are needed to recycle some of the plastic types and because of this many plastic products are still going to the landfills, being incinerated or shipper abroad for recycling. Having a canvas bag with you at the grocery store, reusing the plastic containers you already purchase with your food or recycling your plastic beverage bottles are issues people still struggle with.
Process
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The recycling process of plastics starts with sorting and separating the different plastic types. After this each plastic type is either melted down and molded into a new shape or shredded into flakes and then melded and processed into granulates.
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