Recycling Plastic is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastics and reprocessing the material into useful products, sometimes completely different from their original state. For instance, this could mean melting down soft drink bottles then casting them as plastic chairs and tables.
What You Should Know About Recycling Plastic
By David McEvoy
Plastic is an extremely lightweight and versatile material that can be used for many purposes but particularly for food packaging as it is safe, hygienic, durable, and cheap to produce. The problems arise when we want to dispose of plastic.
Photo: westwiltshire.gov.uk
In theory, it is possible to recycle just about any kind of plastic but in reality this isn’t happening. Despite households producing a large amount of plastic waste every year only around 7% of it is currently being recycled in the UK.
Plastic that is being recycled is used to make a variety of other products and some of these include:
• Plastic bags and bin liners
• Items for gardening like seed trays, composters and even garden sheds
• Fleeces
• Fillings for duvets and sleeping bags
• Insulation
So what happens to plastic that isn’t being recycled?
There is approximately 3 million tonnes of plastic waste each year and more than half of it is packaging. Food packaging in particular tends to have a short life span as the packaging is disposed of as soon as it is opened and unfortunately, most of this will end up in a landfill site. Environmental agency reports estimate that 80% of plastic waste is currently reaching landfill sites and this is a major cause for concern as the space required for land fill sites is increasing.
Producing plastic in the first place has an environmental impact too as it uses a lot of resources and fossil fuels as well as land and water and which also results in waste, although most of the waste from plastic production is reprocessed to make more plastic. Plastic production will often require the use of chemicals to stabilise or colour the plastic and the full impact on our health or the environment is not totally clear. A good example of this is PVC which has been used to make toys and some experts have expressed concern that phthalates might be released if the children put the toys in their mouths.
Another issue surrounding plastic is its degradability. Plastic is non degradable so if it finds its way to a landfill tip no one knows how long it will take to break down because plastic hasn’t been around long enough to tell so it could possibly lie there for many hundreds of years.
The ideal solution would be to recycle or re-use the plastic that has already been produced, but how viable is this? Certainly, recycling plastic has its advantages such as:
• Reduced use of non-renewable fossil fuels
• Reduced consumption of energy
• Reduced amount of plastic waste reaching landfill sites
• Reduced carbon emissions into the atmosphere
So why don’t we recycle more plastic?
A major issue is that plastics must be sorted according to their type and colour before recycling and this is a complex process. Although some technological devices for sorting plastics are slowly being introduced, sorting is normally done manually by people who are trained to do it.
The main barrier to recycling plastic on the part of the consumer is lack of opportunity to do so although the number of collection points for plastic waste is increasing all the time.
Finally, there is not a great demand for some types of plastic and the cost of recycling plastic can actually be more than the cost of producing new plastic.
New solutions are constantly being sought, including the production of plastic that can degrade naturally.
Biodegradable and photo degradable plastic
Some carrier bags are now being produced that are degradable, in other words, they are supposed to break down or rot. There are two types of degradable plastic, one that breaks down when exposed to sunlight and another that breaks down after a certain period of time. Many large retailers are now issuing degradable plastic bags to their customers, and this may sound like an ideal solution but it brings up new concerns:
• If a photodegradable bag ends up in a landfill site it will not break down as there is no sunlight
• As the material biodegrades, methane can be released into the atmosphere
• The mixture of different types of degradable plastics makes sorting it more complex and therefore harder to recycle
• People who are unaware of the implications may simply throw away degradable bags thinking they will break down and by doing this, increase the litter problem
Dealing with plastic waste in the home
The ideal way to dispose of plastic waste is to find another use for it within the home as much as possible, for example, by using empty plastic water bottles and containers to store other materials or find alternative uses for them and by using plastic carrier bags over again instead of throwing them away.
For plastic products that you can’t find another purpose for, you could try to identify where the nearest facilities are for recycling plastic in your area and make full use of them.
Dave McEvoy is an expert in skip hire . For more information about recycling or skip hire , please visit our sites.
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December 9th, 2008 on 4:59 pm
Hi,
My name is Lara Glew. I’ve just visited your website and I was wondering if you’d be
interested in exchanging links with my website. I can offer you a home page link back from
my Recycling website which would be (http://www.lara-glew.com) with Page Rank 3.
Your link will be placed here:
http://www.lara-glew.com (It`s a recycling website with PR3)
As mentioned, your link would be placed on the site home page, not on any “links” pages
which may be buried in the site somewhere.
If you are interested please add the following information to your website and kindly let
me know when it´s ready and I will do the same for you in less than 24 hours, otherwise you
can delete my link from your site.
TITLE: SnaffleUp
URL: http://www.snaffleup.co.uk
DESCRIPTION: SnaffleUp The recycling web site designed to keep useful items out of
landfill.
Or you can use the following html code:
SnaffleUp – SnaffleUp The recycling web site
designed to keep useful items out of landfill.
I hope you have a nice day and thank you for your time,
Lara Glew
lara.glew@lara-glew.com
February 25th, 2009 on 1:19 pm
hi
June 4th, 2009 on 2:11 pm
Hi, good post. I have been woondering about this issue,so thanks for posting. I’ll definitely be coming back to your site.
September 6th, 2009 on 8:43 am
Dear;
I need large of PC plastic sale to China, i am interested in your prodcuts. can you give me more detail information about your company?
Daviddeng
December 21st, 2009 on 2:02 am
Dear Sir or Madam:,
We are Cheung Hung Plastic Trading from Hong Kong. We are doing the Plasitc film recycle business, and looking for those material which list as below:
1. LDPE sticky Rolls, and also LDPE bales (no glue)
2. Pet sticky Rolls, any colour.
3. PP material can be roll or bales, color : white, nature
4. PA6, PA66, PA12 can be any form, material must be pure, colour: mixed, white, nature
5. PS hangers,
6. PP big bag (A, B grade)
7. HDPE bottles or HDPE oil tank.
If you have ,could you provide to us? we can offer a very good and reasonable price for this item base on the quality. Please send the detail and picture to our email .Hope we could establish good business partner.Looking forward to your earliest reply and remain,thank you very much.
Yours fainthfully,
Sally
Cheung Hung Plastic Trading
Email:sallybabyna@yahoo.cn
FAX: 86-752-6386382
June 30th, 2010 on 4:56 pm
Recycling is very very important in order to preserve mother earth.*’.
July 2nd, 2010 on 11:36 pm
Well, I was totally blown away with that. I told my wife and she agreed. I would like to hear whatever else you have on this. Excellent!
July 28th, 2010 on 10:41 am
we should always think about recycling our waste products to help the environment.,,`
August 5th, 2010 on 10:46 am
Like the user before me said, Oxford is made up of many many colleges, all which are unique. You are probably looking into Christ Church College, which has the dining room from Harry Potter as well as the stairway. However, it is very unknown that the ACTUAL dining room was modeled after that of Keeble (sp?) college. If you talk to most people though, they will insist that you must visit Christ Church, but I honestly think that Keeble College is much more fascinating…not as crowded and more enjoyable. As far as the time of year, I am not really sure. They should be open due to the number of tourists that are on holiday, but obviously I wouldnt expect them to be open on the actual Christmas and New Years days. Also there are so many different things to experience in Oxford. I recommend that you DO NOT take a guided tour, as the city is much more fascinating and magical when you discover it yourself. Definitely visit the Eagle and the Child Pub and just walk around and explore the city! Hope you have a great time!
August 24th, 2010 on 9:26 am
Try Fixodent Proguard..if unavailable in your area you can try a mild bleach soak for 15 minutes followed by a thorough brushing with white vinegar and lemon juice. Then soak in plain water for 30 minutes. If this doesn’t help consider a small ultrasonic cleaner that should be available at most discount stores Good Luck
September 14th, 2010 on 4:28 pm
recycling is very important these days because we have lots of pollution*,`
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October 13th, 2010 on 9:27 pm
recycling is very necessary so that we could reduce the waste that we dump on our environment~;,
October 24th, 2010 on 12:26 am
I loved your article and the information provided. There are a ton of suggestions out there that are both savvy and bad. If you have any more suggestions concerning natural health or simliar topics, that would be great. Keep up the excellent writing!
October 25th, 2010 on 5:32 am
recycling is a very important thing to do so that we can help our environment’`.
December 21st, 2010 on 4:45 pm
recycling should always be implemented to avoid to much pollution in the environment *-,