How To Sort Plastic For Industrial Recycling?

As a company that cares not only about the environment, but its customers too, iSustain Recycling provides useful tips for residential and industrial recycling and infroms about the changes in recycling market. In one of our previous blog posts, we have published the information concerning Industrial Plastic Recycling, identifying typical recyclable plastics as well as ideal practices for recycling. The next step in understanding this process is sorting.

Sorting all the types of recyclables could not only help to increase their valut, but is also particularly essential for companies. Sorting plastics for industrial recycling requires extra vigilance. Unlike home recycling, plastic reused at the commercial level usually isn’t really sorted after it gets to a recycler. This implies that recycling companies count on their providers to appropriately sort the plastic before recycling it.

Sorting Is Important

As we mentioned in our post adressed to industrial plastic recycling, there are 7 widely acknowledged material qualities of plastic. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of sorts of plastic that match these qualitites. Each type of plastic has a distinct mix of dyes as well as additives which affect its color, shape, structure, toughness, adaptability, and melting point– and also for producers planning to make use of recycled plastic resin to create brand-new products, it is essential for them to have the correct type of plastic. There is additionally a safety and security reason for sorting plastics. Some sorts can cause dangerous chemical reactions when mixed together. As an example, adding one PVC container to a 900 lbs. tons of PET bottles can contaminate the entire load. This is because when mixed with each other they develop harmful acids, or dioxin emission, that is toxic to people.  If such load went unnoticed, the toxic emissions could be a serious safety problem for workers of the processing facility.

Best Practices for Sorting Plastic

The best and also most efficient way to recycle industrial amounts of plastic at your production center would certainly be to give your recycling company data sheets containing technical specifications for the plastic materials of each plastic thing you are trying to recycle. Such technical specs would tell a recycler things like the Melt Flow, Resin Number, Extrusion or Injection Grade, Izod, and Durometer for that particular type of plastic.

To make sure that everything is correct, your recycling company might likewise clarify the following aspects:

Form: plastic item might be in the form of a part, purge, regrind, film, resin, or repo resin.

Packaging: you might choose to bale this material or it may come on rolls, skids, in gaylords, or in a compactor.

Cross contamination: are there various types of plastic extruded together to form the part or type of film? This is especially common with food wrappers. Here also go laminations, coatings, foils, etc. as these will affect how the plastic item can be recycled.

How To Sort Plastics?

Often there are cases when no resin number is included on the item. If it happens, herer are two easy tests you can conduct to find out the type of plastic.