The two methods and six steps of plastic recycling

Plastic is a daily product in our daily life. Most of plastic is not harmful to us, but it will take a long time to degrade naturally. Then plastic will cause pollution to environment. Plastic recycling also can prevent massive amount of plastic from waste. There are many plastics are recyclable like PVC, PET, PP and etc.The benefits of Recycled PVC film and other Recycled PVC product is significant to the sustainable development.

How is Plastic Recycled?

In general, there are two methods of recycling.

Traditional Recycling

This method is the most widespread recycling method. Another word for traditional recycling is mechanical recycling. This method is suitable for recycling thermoplastic materials.

The traditional recycling method involves melting plastics and processing them into new plastic products. After recyclers melt the plastic, they make them into new products through a process called injection molding.

Advanced Recycling

Advanced recycling is a process through which the effect of chemicals breaks down plastic material. This method consists of three other techniques. These techniques include pyrolysis, chemical recycling, and gasification.

Pyrolysis is a technique that involves recycling plastic waste into crude oil. Chemical recycling entails reducing a polymer into a monomer that can create new products. For example, manufacturers apply chemical recycling to make nylons. Gasification converts plastic to gas. Producers use the gas gotten from this process to create energy.

Both traditional and advanced recycling have their benefits. However, applying any of the two methods depends on the facilities available. The end product a recycler intends to produce also determines the recycling method.

Process of Plastic Recycling

The recycling of plastic is not as hard as manufacturing new plastic products. But it involves rigorous procedures and attention to detail that may take months. Irrespective of the type of plastic and its usage, it usually undergoes some general steps during recycling. Here are six essential steps to recycle plastic materials.

Step 1: Collection of Waste Plastic

The first step, employees or volunteers go around collecting waste plastic from homes, offices, and public places. Certain areas have collection sites where people can dispose of their plastics. Some recyclers put recycling bin around public locations, residential areas, and industrial zones to ease collection. People can dump their plastic waste into these bins. These bins are separate from regular refuse bins. The recycle bins then get collected and transferred to recyclers to continue the process.

Many times, manually gathering plastics or dropping plastic waste into recycling bins may come with rewards. Recyclers retrieve all types of plastic at this stage and send them to a collecting yard.

Step 2: Separating Plastics

After collection, recyclers send the plastic they have gathered to facilities where they separate the plastics according to types. According to different color, resin sort, and other properties, sorts the plastics into different categories. Sorting is essential because it allows recyclers to know which material is involved and how it gets recycled.

Step 3: Washing to Remove Impurities

After sorting plastics, recyclers wash the materials to remove impurities. These impurities in plastic include paper labels, dirt, and particles. Washing plastic also removes glue and additional chemicals that plastic materials may contain.

If it failures to remove impurities may damage the new product. Moreover, the contaminants contained in plastic products are not plastic materials and may not be recyclable.

Step 4: Shredding and Reforming

This process comes immediately after washing plastics. the plastics should be reformed. It is impossible to recycle plastic in its already developed state. Put the materials into shredders to reduce the plastic into fragments. Shredding makes it possible to reprocess plastic to other materials aside from plastic products. Reforming also makes it easier to identify elements like metal that recyclers failed to discover during washing.

Step 5: Identifying and Separate Plastics Secondly

In this process, plastic particles undergo testing procedures.

The reason for testing plastics is to identify the class and quality of the plastic. The plastic materials are then separated based on their features for further processing.

There are several features tested in this process. One of these qualities is density. Recyclers place these plastic particles into a container of water to determine the density of plastic. The particles that sink are less dense, while those that float are denser.

Another quality that this process tests for is the air classification of plastic materials. Air classification determines the thickness of plastic. And to assess air classification, recyclers put plastic particles into a wind tunnel. Thicker and bigger plastic will stay at the bottom of the wind tunnel. The thinner ones will float.

This step also identifies other qualities like color and melting point of plastic. Recyclers test samples of plastic materials to determine the melting point and color of each material. After the identification process, they separate the plastic particles and send them for further processing.

Step 6: Compounding

Compounding is the final process in plastic recycling. This step is where recyclers transform plastic particles into materials that manufacturers can reproduce. Compounding involves smashing and melting plastic particles to create pellets. This process is also called extrusion.

Sometimes, recyclers move plastic to different areas where they can be recycled. The recyclers may move the materials to other plants because of the features in step five. A recycling company may not have the capacity to process all the plastic types it identifies.

At the end of this stage, new plastic and non-plastic products originate from the processing. This final process also consumes the most time and energy. Recyclers must fully understand the end product they aim to get and the entire process to manage time and energy efficiently.

After all this, new plastic materials then emerge or other materials that the recycler intended to create.

Hope this article can help you understand more about plastic recycling. We recycled our PVC waste 100% and offer recycled PVC Film as card layer.