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Hows, whats and wheres of recycling plastic.

Plastics are used in a wide range of applications and some plastics items, such as food packaging, become waste only a short time after purchase. Other plastic items lend themselves to be reused many times over.

Reusing plastic is preferable to recycling as it uses less energy and fewer resources. Long life, multi-trip plastics packaging has become more widespread in recent years, replacing less durable and single-trip alternatives, so reducing waste. For example, the supermarkets have increased their use of returnable plastic crates for transport and display purposes four-fold from 8.5 million in 1992 to an 35.8 million in 2002. They usually last up to 20 years and can be recycled at the end of their useful life.

According to a 2001 Agency report, 80%25 of post-consumer plastic waste is sent to landfill, 8%25 is incinerated and only 7%25 is recycled. In addition to reducing the amount of plastics waste disposal, recycling plastic can have several other advantages:

Conservation of non-renewable fossil fuels - Plastic production uses 8%25 of the world's oil production, 4%25 as feedstock and 4%25 during manufacture.

Reduced consumption of energy.
Reduced amounts of solid waste going to landfill.
Reduced emissions of carbon-dioxide (CO2), nitrogen-oxide (NO) and sulphur-dioxide (SO2).

Plastic scrap recycling

Currently most plastic recycling in the UK is of ' scrap' from industry, i.e. polymers left over from the production of plastics. This is relatively simple and to recycle, as there is a regular and reliable and the material is relatively uncontaminated. scrap represents some 250,000 tonnes of the plastic waste arisings in the UK and approximately 95%25 of this is recycled. This is usually described as reprocessing rather than recycling.

Post-use plastic recycling

Post-use plastic can be described as plastic material arising from products that have undergone a first full service life prior to being recovered. Households are the biggest of plastic waste, but recycling household plastics presents a number of challenges. One of these relates to collection. With over 20 million UK households, kerbside recycling systems are to regularly collect relatively small quantities of mixed plastics from a large number of . Currently, just over half of local offer some form of plastic bottle collection service, and only an 15%25 of UK households are served by kerbside collections that include plastic bottles. The densest network of plastic bottle collection schemes is found in the South and East of England and the Midlands. East Anglia, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have the least coverage. There are approximately 4,000 plastic bottle collection banks in the UK.

RECOUP (RECycling Of Used Plastics Limited) undertakes an annual survey of plastic bottle recycling activity in the UK. Results of the most recent survey that an 24,000 tonnes of plastic bottles were collected in 2003. However, this still only amounts to approximately 5.5%25 of all plastic bottles sold.

Mechanical recycling

Mechanical recycling of plastics refers to which the melting, shredding or granulation of waste plastics. Plastics must be sorted prior to mechanical recycling. At the moment in the UK most sorting for mechanical recycling is done by trained staff who manually sort the plastics into polymer type and/or colour. Technology is being introduced to sort plastics automatically, using various techniques such as X-ray fluorescence, infrared and near infrared spectroscopy, electrostatics and flotation. Following sorting, the plastic is either melted down directly and moulded into a new shape, or melted down after being shredded into flakes and than into granules called regranulate.

Chemical or feedstock recycling

Feedstock recycling describes a range of plastic recovery techniques to make plastics, which break down polymers into their monomers, which in turn can be used again in refineries, or petrochemical and chemical production. A range of feedstock recycling technologies is currently being explored. These include: pyrolysis, hydrogenation, gasification and thermal cracking. Feedstock recycling has a greater flexibility over composition and is more tolerant to impurities than mechanical recycling, although it is capital intensive and very large quantities of used plastic for reprocessing to be viable (e.g. 50,000 tonnes per year).
Plastics recycling in the UK

In 1998, a pilot feedstock recycling plant went operational at BP's Grangemouth site in Scotland, with a capacity to 400 tonnes of mixed plastic waste per annum. A feasibility study into its viability concluded that a 25,000 tonnes per annum plant could be supported from the ' municipal waste alone.

In 1991, LINPAC Plastics Recycling opened a unique plant with the ability to recycle post-consumer polystyrene products. The plant, based in Allerton Bywater, West Yorkshire, has a capacity of over 14,000 tones per year, which is set to increase to 25,000 tonnes per year by 2005. The plant is able to fast food boxes, meat trays, egg cartons, yoghurt pots, vending cups, and a range of other polystyrene products. In addition, the plant a range of polyethylene and polypropylene goods, such as bottles, crates, sheets, caps, pipes and fibres.