Recycling a plastic product is a multi-step process that requires very specialized equipment. Essentially, a finished end product – like a plastic water bottle – is chopped, washed, melted and extruded into plastic pellets. These plastic pellets are then sold to a plastic reprocessor, who will use them in a specific manufacturing process (such as blow molding in the case of plastic bottles or extrusion in the case of plastic lumber) to create a “new” or “recycled” plastic product.
The Plastic Bottle Recycling Process
Recycling a plastic product is a multi-step process that requires very specialized equipment. Essentially, a finished end product – like a plastic water bottle – is chopped, washed, melted and extruded into plastic pellets. These plastic pellets are then sold to a plastic reprocessor, who will use them in a specific manufacturing process (such as blow molding in the case of plastic bottles or extrusion in the case of plastic lumber) to create a “new” or “recycled” plastic product.
The first step of the plastic recycling process is INSPECTION, which takes place at the recycling centre. This process is designed to weed out any foreign materials, such as an errant plastic margarine container that inadvertently ended up in a bale of plastic bottles. Because plastics have different properties and characteristics, most plastics recycling involves the separation of different plastics by resin type. The only noteworthy exception to this is plastic lumber, which can use different types of plastics.
After the plastic products are inspected, they are CHOPPED and WASHED. This serves to clean the material and to get it into a more manageable size for the next few processes. The first of these is SEPARATION BY FLOTATION, which means that the bits and pieces of plastic go through a further resin identification process to ensure that only the one type of plastic has made it this far in the recycling process. Certain types of plastic will rise to the top of the flotation tank and others, because of their higher densities, will sink.
From there, the plastic bits and pieces are DRIED and then MELTED BY HEAT AND PRESSURE. The melted plastic is then FILTERED TO REMOVE CONTAMINANTS and then EXTRUDED INTO FINE STRANDS which resemble spaghetti.
Depending on the application of the recycled plastic product, the plastic strands either go through a PELLETIZING machine, which chops them up into little plastic pellets to get them ready to be processed into a new plastic item. Or, certain plastics may be spun into a fibre, which means that the strands being extruded are very, very fine and then directly spun into a fibre used to make items like fleece and fiberfill for sleeping bags and ski jackets. In this case, the strands would not be pelletized. In the end, the initial plastic bottle has been recycled into something new.