Plastic Recycle

IT'S PLASTIC!
Americans seem to have a love–hate affair with plastic. We look down

on plastic imitations of natural products and fibers. They are cheap, we

say. We all want real leather, for example, rather than imitation plastic.
Yet we are using plastic products more than ever before. We cover our

food in plastic wrap, drink coffee from Styrofoam® cups, wear clothes

made from man-made fibers like nylon, polyester, and rayon, and even

buy our plastic things with plastic credit cards! We use plastic hundreds

of times every day.
Plastic is a versatile product. Plastic can be flexible or rigid; transparent

or opaque. It can look like leather, wood, or silk. It can be made into toys

or heart valves. Altogether there are more than 10,000 different kinds

of plastics. The basic raw materials for plastic are petroleum and/or

natural gas. These fossil fuels are sometimes combined with other

elements, such as oxygen or chlorine, to make different types of plastic.
Plastics are not the waste and energy culprits that some people think

they are. Plastics are really very energy efficient. It takes 20-40

percent less energy to manufacture plastic grocery bags than paper

ones. And, since plastics are lightweight and take up so little space,

it is much more efficient to transport them. It takes seven trucks to

deliver the same number of paper bags as can be carried in one

truckload of plastic bags.

DECODING PLASTICS

PET Polyethylene Terephthalate Two-liter beverage bottles,

mouthwash bottles, boil-in-bag pouches.
HDPE High Density Polyethylene Milk jugs, trash bags, detergent bottles.
PVC Polyvinyl Chloride Cooking oil bottles, packaging around meat.
LDPE Low Density Polyethylene Grocery bags, produce bags, food

wrap, bread bags.
PP Polypropylene Yogurt containers, shampoo bottles, straws,

margarine tubs, diapers.
PS Polystyrene Hot beverage cups, take-home boxes, egg cartons, meat

trays, cd cases.
OTHER All other types of plastics or packaging made from more than

one type of plastic.

DISPOSING OF PLASTIC ANOTHER look PLASTICS RECYCLING IN

AMERICA

Today, Americans recycle only 5 percent of all the plastics produced in

this country. Why aren’t we recycling more? There is no simple answer.
Part of the issue in recycling plastics is the cost. To remain competitive

in the global marketplace, manufacturers usually choose the cheapest

option for making products. New plastic resin, or virgin resin, often costs

less than recycled plastic. Until recently, when the U.S, experienced

massive hurricanes, virgin resin was cheaper than recycled plastic.

After the hurricanes in 2005, supplies of oil and natural gas--the building

blocks of virgin resins--became limited and more expensive. Prices for

virgin resin soared, and the demand for recycled plastics increased.
Another important consideration is human behavior. Surveys conducted

by Proctor & Gamble and other companies show that while most people

expect their plastic to be recycled, they won't go out of their way or pay

a few cents more to buy products made of recycled plastic.
There are success stories in plastics recycling, nonetheless. Soft-drink

bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) can be melted down

and made into carpet, t-shirts, stuffing for ski jackets, or molded into

bottles again. In 1999, Ford Motor Company used more than 60 million

2-liter plastic soda bottles (7.5 million pounds) to make grille

reinforcements, window frames, engine covers and trunk carpets for

its new vehicles.

In recent years, several plastics recycling companies have closed their

doors. They claimed they could not sell their products at a price that

would allow them to stay in business. Thanks to the relatively low cost

of petroleum today, the price of virgin plastic is so inexpensive that

recycled plastic cannot compete. The price of virgin resin is about 40

percent lower than that of recycled resin.
Because recycled plastic is more expensive, people aren’t exactly lining

up to buy it. Surveys conducted by Procter & Gamble and others show

that while most people expect their plastic to be recycled, they won’t go

out of their way or pay a few cents more to buy a bottle made of recycled

plastic. Recyclers say plastics recycling won’t be profitable until we close

the loop by creating more demand for recycled plastics.
Soft-drink bottles, however, are one success story in plastics recycling.

Made of polyethylene terephthalate (PETE), they can be melted down

and made into carpet, t-shirts, stuffing for ski jackets, or molded into

bottles again. When a soft-drink bottle is recycled into another soft-drink

bottle, the loop is closed.
Is plastic trash choking the Earth with Styrofoam® cups and fast-food

plates? Not really. That’s just another misconception. By weight, plastics

make up about 11 percent of America’s municipal solid waste.

In comparison, paper makes up about 35 percent.
Of course, plastics are generally very lightweight. When plastics are

buried in a landfill, they occupy about 25 percent of the space. Putting

plastics into landfills is not always the best disposal method. There are

two other alternatives: recycling and incineration.
These methods recover some of the value from the plastic. Recycling

recovers the raw material, which can then be used to make new plastic

products. Incineration recovers the chemical energy, which can be used

to produce steam and electricity. Landfilling plastics does neither of

these things. The value of landfilled plastic is buried forever.
RECYCLING PLASTICS
Recycling plastics is easy. First, you should learn what types of plastics

can be recycled and only give your collector those types of plastics.
Resist the temptation to slip plastics that recyclers don’t want into the

recycling bin. Plastics have different formulations and should be sorted

before they are recycled to make new products. Mixed plastics can be

recycled, but they are not as valuable as sorted plastics because the

recycled plastic’s physical properties, such as strength, may vary with

each batch.
Once you know what kinds of plastics your recycler wants, you should

follow the wash and squash rule—rinse the container and squash it.

You may leave the paper labels on the container, but throw away the

plastic caps. Plastic caps are usually made from a different type of plastic

than the container and cannot be easily recycled.

HOW PLASTIC IS RECYCLED
A recycling plant uses seven steps to turn plastic trash into recycled

plastic:
1. Inspection Workers inspect the plastic trash for contaminants like rock

and glass, and for plastics that the plant cannot recycle.
2. Chopping and Washing The plastic is washed and chopped into flakes.
3. Flotation Tank If mixed plastics are being recycled, they are sorted in

a flotation tank, where some types of plastic sink and others float.
4. Drying The plastic flakes are dried in a tumble dryer.
5. Melting The dried flakes are fed into an extruder, where heat and

pressure melt the plastic. Different types of plastics melt at different

temperatures.
6. Filtering The molten plastic is forced through a fine screen to remove

any contaminants that slipped through the washing process. The molten

plastic is then formed into strands.
7. Pelletizing The strands are cooled in water, then chopped into uniform

pellets. Manufacturing companies buy the plastic pellets from recyclers

to make new products. Recycled plastics also can be made into flowerpots,

lumber, and carpeting.

ENERGY FROM PLASTIC
Because plastics are made from fossil fuels, you can think of them as

another form of stored energy. Pound for pound, plastics contain as much

energy as petroleum or natural gas, and much more energy than other

types of garbage. This makes plastic an ideal fuel for waste-to-energy

plants.
Waste-to-energy plants burn garbage and use the heat energy released

during combustion to make steam or electricity. They turn garbage into

useful energy. So, should we burn plastics or recycle them? It depends.

Sometimes it takes more energy to make a product from recycled plastics

than it does to make it from all-new materials. If that’s the case, it makes

more sense to burn the plastics at a waste-to-energy plant than to recycle

them. Burning plastics can supply an abundant amount of energy, while

reducing the cost of waste disposal and saving landfill space.
PAPER OR PLASTIC?
A paper cup or a plastic cup? Should you choose paper cups over plastic

cups since the paper cups are made from natural wood products and will

degrade? Not if the plastic cup is polystyrene (another name for Styrofoam®).
A study by Canadian scientist Martin Hocking shows that making a paper cup

uses as much petroleum or natural gas as a polystyrene cup. Plus, the paper

cup uses wood pulp. The Canadian study said, “The paper cup consumes

12 times as much steam, 36 times as much electricity, and twice as much

cooling water as the plastic cup.” And because the paper cup uses more

raw materials and energy, it also costs 2.5 times more than the plastic

cup. But the paper cup will degrade, right? Probably not. Modern landfills

are designed to inhibit degradation so that toxic wastes do not seep into

the surrounding soil and groundwater. The paper cup will still be a paper

cup 20 years from now.

Learn more about how long it takes buried trash to disappear.
DEGRADABLE plastic
Degrade is another word for rot. It’s nature’s way of getting rid of dead

plants and animals or the things made from them. Of course, plastics

are man-made materials, but scientists have figured out two ways to

make plastics degrade: biodegradation and photodegradation.
Biodegradable plastics are made with five percent cornstarch or vegetable

oil. The idea is that hungry bacteria will devour the starch or oil in the

plastic, causing the plastic to disintegrate into a fine dust. That is the idea,

but does it really work? No, say both environmentalists and plastics

manufacturers. Nothing degrades quickly in a modern landfill, not even

organic wastes like paper and food scraps, so there is no reason to think

that the corn starch in biodegradable plastics will disappear overnight

either. Modern landfills are designed to inhibit degradation, not promote

it. The idea is to keep wastes in, so landfill contaminants do not seep into

the surrounding environment. In addition, biodegradable plastics cannot

be recycled because the starch or oil additive compromises the quality

of recycled plastics.
Photodegradable plastics are a different matter. They use no organic

additives. They are made with a special type of plastic that breaks down

and becomes brittle in the presence of sunlight. Of course, that means

photodegradable plastics do not break down when they are covered by

leaves or snow, or when they are buried in a landfill.
The maker of the plastic six-ring carrier that is used to attach six cans of

soda, beer, and other beverages, says its photodegradable carrier loses

75 percent of its strength when exposed to sunlight after just a few days,

and totally disintegrates within a matter of weeks. This means if an animal

were to become entangled in the six-ring carrier, it could rip through the

weakened pack to free itself. Since photodegradable plastics contain no

organic additives, they can also be recycled, unlike their biodegradable cousins.

Last Revised: September 2006Source: National Energy Education

Development Project, Museum of Solid Waste , 2006