Exposing the Myth of Plastic Recycling

Re:Exposing the Myth of Plastic Recycling by WheelsAtLarge on Sunday September 22, 2019 @09:04PM (#21045151)

There are 2 points that all these stories miss. Recycled plastic is more expensive and less sturdy than new plastic. Also, there are limits to how many times plastic gets recycled. Example: there are companies that make cloth from recycled bottles but it's often mixed with other fibers which makes the cloth unrecyclable.

Plastic recycling just does not happen. Eventually, all of it is burnt or dumped.

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Re:Exposing the Myth of Plastic Recycling by rini17 on Monday September 23, 2019 @03:17PM (#21052500)

This seems unsolvable without new compostable or otherwise easily processed plastics.

At our university a bioplastic "nonoilen" was developed that can be made from waste biomass (PLA + polyhdroxybutyrate formula) and compostable without any toxic residues. So far, like most "compostable" plastic, it requires industrial composter with temperatures over 50°C, but further improvements are being developed.

https://www.plasticsinsight.com/stu-team-develops-second-gen...

Toothbrush manufacture is planned (Slovak language, sorry). Hope it works out: https://aprilmagazin.curaprox.com/prve-curaprox-kefky-z-biop...

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Re:Exposing the Myth of Plastic Recycling by delfinom on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:41AM (#21047899)

Yep. There is only one case where plastic can be reused high efficiently (during molding any bad parts or scrap are chucked right back in). But otherwise it's a nightmare of problems from being able to clean out contaminants, the inability to remove the color dye, the various mixtures of plastics, etc.

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