What Happens When Plastic Is Recycled?

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Lynn Bestul, I'm the solid waste planner for New Hanover county in North Carolina. I'm here to talk to you today about what happens to those plastics that you recycle. When it gets to a facility primarily it's going to be sorted at the recycling facility by the type of plastic that it is. They will sort out numbers ones, numbers twos, the milk jugs from the water bottles and so forth. Because of the fact that those materials are going to be marketed separately. So when it comes into a facility it will be pushed into, in the New Hanover county facility, goes into one hopper in the floor. That material is then pushed up through a conveyor system to the top of the compactor or the baler, and it drops down into the baler facility. A ram crunches that material, and it makes a cube out of it. That plastic is then banded up, and pushed out of the machine, out of the baler and then we load those bales onto trailers so they can be shipped off to markets. Once they get to markets that plastic is used for a number of different items. Number one it is going to be used to remake those bottles that you have already been recycling. One of the other items that is something that bio-pharmaceutical manufactures are just getting into they are finding out that environmentally it is better to make their bio-pharmaceuticals out of in plastic manufacturing equipment rather than stainless steel. It doesn't, they don't have to use different environmentally unsafe materials to clean the stainless steel. When the plastic is done they simply discard it. It's a lot less expensive to bull, and they have been able to save money with that. That plastic however, it may not go to an actual recycling center, one of the recommendations for them is to go through a waste to energy facility. Plastic is an outstanding BTU value, it is about three times the value of municipal solid waste in a waste energy facility. So that is a great place for that plastic to go, and then it is renewed power. That plastic is being used to make electricity. And that's primarily how and what is done with your plastic that you recycle."