Recycling plastic is a strategy for reducing plastic waste by turning around and reusing it. Recycled plastic can be reduced to regrind pellets which are then melted and combined with virgin plastic to manufacture new products. That being the case, why not take plastic destined for the trash it and turn it into trash bags instead?
That is exactly what Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics did about four years ago. Dow worked with a number of industry partners to collect tons of post-industrial plastic scrap, recycle it, and turn it into trash bags that were used to collect trash at beaches all across the U.S. It was all part of the 2017 International Coastal Cleanup Day.
Choosing Post-Industrial Plastics
Key to the success of the project was the plastics chosen for recycling. It is no accident that engineers wanted post-industrial plastic scrap. This is scrap that comes from manufacturers, warehouses, industrial operations, etc. It is not the plastic you and I throw into our curbside recycling bins.
It turns out that post-industrial plastic makes all the difference in the world. As to why Tennessee-based Seraphim Plastics explains it very clearly.
According to Seraphim, post-industrial scrap does not need to be cleaned or sorted. There is no need to deal with multiple types of recyclables all mixed in the same collection. Post-industrial plastic is a single type of plastic that can go directly from the pickup point to the recycling center without any intermediate action.
Easy Plastic to Recycle
Because there is no sorting or decontamination involved, post-industrial plastic is easy to recycle. A load of scrap plastic cutoffs from an injection mold factory can be immediately ground to create a plastic regrind. The same is true for purge material created when the factory purges its machines.
The nice thing about post-industrial plastic is that the regrind it generates can be mixed with virgin plastic pellets without sacrificing the integrity of the finished product. Manufacturers can use a certain amount of regrind and still guarantee product quality.
Preserving Landfill Space
Getting back to the 2017 trash bag project, the post-industrial plastic collected by Dow and its partners would have otherwise ended up in a landfill. All that plastic takes up valuable landfill space. Meanwhile, the coastal cleanup project would have purchased plastic garbage bags from elsewhere. That would have meant more plastic in the landfill.
By turning the scrap plastic waste into trash bags, no new trash bags had to be purchased. Converting the scrap into trash bags also saved space in the landfill by taking what was a bulky material and turning it into something thinner and more streamlined. Two goals were accomplished here.
Plastic Recycling Is Possible
Though the Dow project is now four years old, it is a shining example proving that plastic recycling is possible. We can do with industrial plastics what seems impossible with residential counterparts. That is not because industrial plastic is superior; it is because the system is much more efficient.
Collecting, sorting, and cleaning curbside recyclables is terribly inefficient. On the other hand, exceptional efficiency makes recycling post-industrial plastic possible. That is the key to fixing our curbside recycling programs. If we change the way we manufacture and use consumer plastics, we could make recycling them as efficient as industrial plastics.
Dow and its partners made a brilliant choice to transform industrial plastic scrap into garbage bags. To then use those garbage bags to clean up beaches was a stroke of genius. As long as the plastic is destined for a landfill, you might just as well get one last use out of it.
