Recycling of Plastics Wastes
Plastics waste originates from packaging, municipal solid waste, construction and demolition,
end-of-life vehicles, medical and biomedical sources, and electrical waste and electronic
equipment.
Plastics waste is defined as discarded plastic products or materials which are no longer used
in their present form or condition; however, it is a resource which is potentially useful.
Plastic production and consumption have increased dramatically over recent years, and has
become a global environmental concern. This increased amount of plastics waste presents a
storage problem.
The Growing Problem of Plastic Waste in India
Plastic waste has increased at an alarming rate in India, fuelled by rapid urbanisation,
population growth, and economic development. In urban areas, the demand for single-use
plastics and packaging materials has risen drastically. India’s per capita plastic consumption
has grown to higher level and this is expected to rise further with increasing industrialization
and consumerism.
Factors Influencing Plastics Waste
The global economy has undergone radical changes which have significant implications for
industrial development. The plastic industry has generated mixed waste not only in terms of
the quantity of waste, but also its composition. Economic loss from industrial waste must be
restricted as discarding plastics waste is detrimental to an industrial waste management
system requires knowledge of the quantity of waste which is generated. Any exploitation of
the potential for industrial waste recycling relies on detailed knowledge of industrial waste
production; however, many problems arise when trying to ascertain the type and quantity of
industrial waste. The environment is a key factor that impacts an individual’s quality of life
and plays a pivotal role in current waste disposal/recycling processes. Industrial waste is a
term which refers to all waste produced by industrial operations or derived from manufacturing
processes
Waste Resources
Waste plastics starts from packaging, municipal solid waste, construction and demolition, end-
of-life vehicles, medical and biomedical, and waste electrical and electronic equipment.
Domestic Waste
Domestic waste is not only contaminated with wet garbage, but is also far from collection
points, which makes sorting difficult. The lightweight plastics or bottles greatly increase
operating costs. The plastics to be recycled should operate over a large enough area with an
efficient collection system being necessary. The waste from urban areas has proven to be the
most difficult and costly aspect of plastics recycling.
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Packaging Waste
The use of plastic materials is constantly increasing. They are the largest packaging material,
exceeding materials such as metal, glass, paper, paperboard, among others. They extend the
shelf life of foods and beverages and provide convenient storage.
Plastic bags are one of the most commonly used means of packaging because of their
versatility, lightweight, flexibility, moisture resistance and strength. Further, plastic bags are
mostly relatively inexpensive.
There is an increase in the demand for food due to an ever-increasing population where
plastics packaging has continuous and unabated usage. Plastics packaging waste constitutes
an increasing fraction of household waste. Developed countries have executed waste
management systems to collect, recover and recycle. However, for a long time now, littering
and landfilling of plastics waste has continued in many developing countries.
This has raised concerns about their increasing occurrence in the soil. Therefore, it poses
significant threat to ecosystem. Waste plastics have the non-point sources like runoff during
heavy rainfall greatly not only contributed to environmental contamination but also choking
cause disaster. Polyethylene terephthalate commonly known as PET are dominate in many of
the food packaging. However, polyolefin such as Polyethylene, polypropylene, and
polystyrene, dominate as plastics packaging markets and contributes as main waste plastics.
E-Waste
E-waste is the waste material from electronics. It consists of metal and plastics. This E-waste
are being recovered and/or recycled due to its valuable metals such as gold, silver, platinum,
palladium, etc., and engineering plastics which cost higher. E-waste also contains additives
such as halogen and phosphorus compounds have associated with health concerns.
Compression moulding into usable end products is the best technique to recycle E-waste.
E-waste recycling of plastic materials has attracted attention due to
• Higher cost of virgin plastic materials.
• Equipment population growth beyond the model base years.
• Increasing consumption of electrical and electronic equipment.
• Limited lifespan of electrical and electronic devices.
Landfilled or improperly dismantled electronic devices leach and emit extremely hazardous
substances, including
• Metals such as lead, cadmium, tin, etc.
• Flame retardants such as polyhalogenated biphenyls,
bromine flame retardants, etc.
• Plastics with additives such as polyvinylchloride, phthalates, antistatics, etc.
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Automotive Waste
Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, polypropylene and copolymers, and polyamide are major
plastic materials are reprocessed from automotive components from end-life vehicles as foot
wears from footwear industries.
HIPS is used for manufacturing shoe heel components. The vast majority of scrapped
automobiles are processed for recycling starts from shredders and the systems are designed
and employed primarily to separate the ferrous and non-ferrous portions of discarded vehicles.
The pieces of shredded material are conveyed through a series of separators. Automobile
plastics wastes are processed for recycling primarily separated from ferrous and non-ferrous
portions of discarded vehicles.
Medical Plastics Waste
Thus, medical plastics waste management has been of major concern owing to their
potentially high risks to human health and the environment. The HCW generation in developed
countries are usually higher than developing countries, probably owing to availability of
advanced technologies.
Recycle medical plastics possible to recycle provided plastics packages and wrappers are often
generated without any contact with contaminated materials. A correct segregation is essential
to ensure adequate procedure of packaging at the time of waste generation.
Otherwise, plastics waste generation from the hospital cause an increasing threat to the public
and environment. They are hazardous and can be classified as toxic non-biodegradable
material. These materials accumulate with time. The accumulation can disturb the surrounding
environment. However, a positive method for disposal, such as reuse, would have a beneficial
effect. Therefore, there has been increased use of recycled products even in medical
applications; however, they require sterilization. As they are recycled materials, there may be
a possibility of internal cracks or voids in the products or deterioration during sterilization.
Without plastics, what is not stored is not managed; therefore, much expense has been
incurred to preserve the medical and food materials for use at a later date. Previously, the
predominant constituent of plastics waste in medical waste was polyvinyl chloride (PVC), an
inexpensive and common polymer used for both medical and commercial products.
Agriculture Plastics Waste
Plastic litter could also reduce arable agricultural productivity by reducing aeration in the soil
and percolation of water in agricultural fields. Plastic bags littering the environment detract
from the natural beauty of a site serving as a focal point for tourism. The excessive use of
plastic bags imposes several negative costs to the environment, such as being unsightly,
durable litter that is very slow to degrade. The negative effects of plastic bag litter have also
been experienced by the main sectors crucial for rural livelihoods, namely agriculture.
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Recycling of Plastic Wastes
Primary Recycling
In-house recycling is primary recycling which ultimately strives for primary closed-loop
recycling of plastics, but has only been achieved for a very narrow plastic segment, such as
clear PET bottles, for which dedicated collection schemes already exist. Industrial waste from
the manufacture of plastic products is regarded as a manufacturing loss; the reduction of
plastics waste, as a result of recycling the material, increases productivity and reduces the
manufacturing loss. The in-house reuse of process waste has been common industrial from
landfills.
As disposal costs increase, the reuse of previously discarded waste from one industry by
another is becoming more common. During processing, significant amounts of product end
up in recycling bins and dumpsters, which is problematic.
Plastics waste recycling can help protect the environment and improve manufacturers’
profitability. When plastics waste is recycled it is a valuable resource for manufacturing
products, with a similar status to virgin materials. There is considerable profit in recycling
plastics waste and the marketing of recycled plastics is not a problem due to the eagerness
of end users to utilize the material.
Reprocessing Essentials
Before collection and transportation, separate storage of plastics from other types of waste is
needed in reprocessing unit. However, it is to get a sufficiently clean and homogeneous plastic
material.
Reprocessing should have agglomerating equipment, granulators and extruders.
• Regeneration of plastic from plastics wastes
• Should be with satisfactory quality for production
• Should not have contaminations other than plastics which reduces the plant capacity and
lower revenues.
• Require mechanical wet refining and/or sorting before regeneration to prevent equipment
clogging from contaminations.
• To avoid with unnecessary refining which reduces the volume of the recycle plastic.
Secondary Recycling Process of Plastic Waste
Secondary or Mechanical recycling consists of the reprocessing of plastic residues into new
products, different from or similar to the original products. The waste plastic used may come
from the manufacturing process or from post-consumer products. This is the simplest way of
recycling plastic waste, demanding the lowest initial investments.
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This recycling process involves several steps, which generally include the following: collection,
separation, shredding, washing, sorting, agglomeration and extrusion.
1. Waste Collection
Collecting the plastic to be recycled depends on the different sites used for waste disposal. In
most of the places, the plastic waste is mixed with other types of household wastes. Therefore,
it is important to separate common waste and plastic waste.
Process stream for recycling of plastic wastes
2. Shredding (Size Reduction)
Size reduction is necessary, because the material particles must be a suitable size for further
processing. This may involve a two-stage process, the first using a shredder to produce large
particles of about 25-50 mm. These materials can then be flaked. Rotary cutters are most
commonly employed for the latter.
The rotary cutter is a fairly simple device consisting of the rotor and rotating knives, stationary
(stator) knives, the grinding chamber and the screen. As the plastic moves between the
stationary and rotating blades, it is cut down to size. This size is determined by the mesh size
of the screen, a common size is around 5 mm × 5 mm.
A rotary cutter must be able to dissipate the heat generated from the shearing action of the
blades. This can be done with an air extractor, which also aids in moving regrind material out
of the chamber. Because contaminants may get into the system and because of the variable
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hardness and variety of plastics, the knives are mounted to attain the best cutting action
possible.
3. Washing
Washing is required to remove any dirt and residues adhering to the waste plastic. It increases
the purity of the plastics and in some cases improves the efficiency of other processes such
as sorting.
The principles are the same as those applied to any household washing detergent. The
contaminants must adhere more strongly to the cleaning medium than the plastic to allow for
removal. Washing also removes labels and water soluble glue residues. Once the materials
are washed they then need to be dried. This can be done mechanically simply using gravity
and a conveyor to allow any liquid to drain away. Thermal methods use hot air to dry the
plastic flakes.
4. Identification and Sorting of Plastics
One way to allow easy identification of plastics is to mark the mouldings. This is mandatory
in the packaging industry, so turning over a plastic bottle or container should reveal a plastics
identity code.
This allows the plastics to be sorted manually. Manual sorting is a very labour intensive process
requiring little equipment, but relies on the accuracy of the human labour to produce a high
purity product. An alternative is to use mechanised sorting technologies. This works by utilising
differences in material properties.
The polyolefin fractions (PP, LDPE, HDPE) all have densities below 1g/cm3. This allows a
process called ‘float-and-sink’ to be used to separate them from the other polymer
fractions. Separation is carried out in a flotation tank using water as the separation medium.
The lighter polyolefin fraction remains floating on the surface and denser particles sink.
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Separating tanks with water solutions for sorting municipal plastic waste
PET and PVC have the same density. How can these materials be separated from each other?
In this case a technique called X-ray fluorescence can be used. Many plastics are made up of
the same elements such as carbon and hydrogen.
PVC contains chlorine atoms. This technique detects the chlorine and can be used to indicate
samples for removal from the waste stream. In this way PVC can be separated.
A further technique for separating generic material types is infrared (IR) sorting. On exposure
to IR light, the polymer molecules emit light energy, this can be detected and the spectral
distribution that is produced is characteristic for each material type.
For example, a commercial IR machine operating in the near infra-red region may use a
wavelength of 0.5 to 0.8 μm to cause the emission of light in the plastic. Whilst in theory all
types of plastic could be separated, in reality commercial machines tend to separate only
popular generic types ie. PP, PA, polycarbonate, and polyurethanes.
The base colour of plastics can also change the spectral pattern that is produced. There are
other techniques to separate plastics by colour, electrostatic charges and surface properties.
The choice of sorting technique needs to take into account the likely composition of the plastic
waste and utilise the best and most economically available technology to attain end products
of suitable purity for processing.
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5. Agglomeration
The aim of the agglomeration is to increase the bulk density of the waste, which is necessary
to ensure good feeding for some plastication units. It finds most application in waste plastics
with film flake, which can have a bulk density of just 100 to 150 kg/m3.
Agglomeration can be differentiated from processing as here the aim is simply to bond the
flakes together at their surfaces and therefore only the surfaces of the plastics are affected.
Pressing or fusion are used for this, with the material being thermally stressed on the surface
particles only for a relatively short time.
6. Extrusion and Regranulation
In this step, the shredded plastic is melted and extruded into pellets, which are used for
future plastic product production.
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