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Injection moulding can utilise about 30% recycled pellets to 70% of new plastic or it doesn't flow properly. Since that is how most of the mass-produced plastic
by PaulKeeble 7y ago
Injection moulding can utilise about 30% recycled pellets to 70% of new plastic or it doesn't flow properly. Since that is how most of the mass-produced plastic used gets utilised it is a bit of an issue when the recycling volume is just 30% of the total. More problematically plastic containing prior recycled material can not be recycled again, you get just one extra use of 1/3 of it. That is basically throw away, it doesn't really recycle in any usable way.
- umvi 7y agoThere isn't any sort of chemistry that could be used to refine it to a higher quality state?
- derefr 7y agoCertainly, you can turn plastic back into its constituents (e.g. PET into ethylene), with input of enough energy. But where do you get that energy? Consider: any drop of fossil fuel that is spent recovering plastic back into oil, could instead have been used to make new plastic in the first place, obviating that recovery. It's more efficient to turn oil into plastic directly, than to use oil to turn plastic into oil, and then turn that oil into plastic. And, of course, any watt of renewable energy used on this process, is one that drives up grid demand and thus makes fossil fuels more competitive as grid base-load supply...