In large and small waste recycling stations, plastic bottles have always been the most popular kind of “waste”, and many people are curious about how these plastic bottles are recycled, and where do they go after recycling? What was made of it? Let’s take a look at it today.
Most bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic known by its acronym PET. PET plastic is an excellent choice for beverage bottles because it is easy to shape, good toughness, breathable, acid and alkali resistant, lighter than traditional glass bottles, and has a high degree of transparency.
1.Recycle
Compared with other waste products, disposable plastic bottles are relatively easy to recycle, the reuse rate is also very high, PET plastic bottles are also easy to separate from other garbage, most of them are colorless and transparent, and it is easy to reshape thermoplastics.
2.Manufacture
The recycled plastic bottles are first squashed and packed to make it easier to transport, and then the squashed beverage bottles are passed through a crusher and turned into small pieces of plastic. These plastic pieces are cleaned to remove the soil, labels, dirt, etc., attached to the surface, and then separated the body of the bottle and the cap by density differences, because the cap and the body of the beverage bottle are made of different plastics.
Recycle and reuse
After a series of cleaning and screening processes, the remaining pieces of PET plastic are heated and melted into small plastic particles. These granular plastics can then be used as raw materials to produce new plastic products. Of course, sometimes the recycled PET plastic is first depolymerized into monomer molecules, and then re-polymerized.
To make other new environmental products
Recycled PET plastic can be made into new packaging containers, plastic films, and man-made fibers to make cloth and clothing. Recycled plastic bottles eventually become a piece of clothing may not sound very amazing, in fact, the application of the textile industry is indeed very wide, but as a fiber, PET will generally be called “polyester fiber” or “polyester”, hear the two names, is not it feel very familiar, flip the label of the clothes, you will see it.
In the past, PET plastic recycled by traditional methods will not be used to make beverage bottles or other contact food packaging, because the cleaning method at that time is not up to standard, the main cleaning is the surface of the plastic, can not ensure that the pollutants that penetrate the inside of the plastic are completely removed.
The Internet age is convenient for recycling
With the progress of the Internet + waste recycling technology, through the deep cleaning under high temperature, vacuum and other conditions, the recycled PET plastic has been able to meet the cleanliness of the production of food packaging, and the discarded beverage bottles can be recycled into new beverage bottles again, and the recycling is truly realized.
Caring for the environment starts with you and me
Therefore, in our daily life, we must take the initiative to do a good job of waste classification and recycling, and the recyclable plastics will be processed by throwing away a key of paper, improving the recycling rate of recyclable plastics, reducing the pollution caused by plastics to the natural environment, and reducing the waste of resources.
