# Plastic recycling? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 24, 2009, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plastic-recycling/490658 "2009-03-24T22:51:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plastic-recycling/490658/1 "2009-03-24T22:51:42Z")
There’s some sort of campaign going on over here in the Netherlands encouraging people to separate their plastic garbage. There doesn’t appear to be any place to actually deliver the plastics, but that’s not the question. My question is: given the current state of technology, is recycling plastics feasible economically and/or environmentally? That is, is it possible to recycle plastics in some way that doesn’t harm the environment more than just dumping it with all the rest of the thrash, and if so, is it reasonably affordable (if not cheaper than making new plastics)? Also, the information I can find basically only specifies soft plastic containers and the like as eligable for recycling. he campaign’s site is suspiciously unhelpful: [http://www.plasticheroes.nl/](http://www.plasticheroes.nl/) and especially [this pdf](http://www.plasticheroes.nl/images/stories/plasticrecycling_150.pdf) which helpfully shows how plastic garbage is grinded into little pellets, magically turned into new plastic and leaves it at that. Please fight my ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plastic-recycling/490658/2 "2009-03-24T23:17:58Z")
I would start with Cecil’s article here: [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1022/what-does-the-chasing-arrows-recycling-code-on-plastic-products-mean](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1022/what-does-the-chasing-arrows-recycling-code-on-plastic-products-mean) There was another one on recycling feasibility, but I can’t find it with a quick search. Also, you have to realize, Cecil’s research is done in the US, which has abundant space for landfills, and European nations generally have less. That has an effect on cost, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plastic-recycling/490658/3 "2009-03-25T00:00:07Z")
All plastic ends up trash at some point. Recycling plastic allows to to be used for a longer period. The use of the plastic for stuff like exterior deck boards seems to work well. You never get a better plastic than than the original materials, and it will be a muddier color every time because you can’t remove the colorant. Remember that often something labeled as a percentage recycled is just the trimmings and defects of the manufacturing process fed back into the material bins. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plastic-recycling/490658/4 "2009-03-25T00:06:04Z")
> [@Harmonious\_Discord](#): > > All plastic ends up trash at some point. Recycling plastic allows to to be used for a longer period. The use of the plastic for stuff like exterior deck boards seems to work well. You never get a better plastic than than the original materials, and it will be a muddier color every time because you can’t remove the colorant. Remember that often something labeled as a percentage recycled is just the trimmings and defects of the manufacturing process fed back into the material bins. This is interesting enough, but I’m particularly interested in if recycling plastics from whatever I’d otherwise throw away makes any sense, not if “rest” bits and pieces get reused from manufacturing, which I would assume is a hell of a lot easier. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plastic-recycling/490658/5 "2009-03-25T01:03:36Z")
I think that’s called “post-consumer plastic recycling”. Here’s a [more relevant SD column](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2346/is-recycling-worth-it) from 2000, but Cecil basically says that plastic wasn’t really a good candidate back then, but may be with new technological advances. Then there’s a much more interesting and informative [article from Popular Mechanics’s December 08 issue](http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/how_your_house_works/4291566.html?nav=hpPrint&do=print). Some quotes (bolding mine): > [@](#): > > To resolve the environmental debate once and for all, experts have begun to conduct detailed life-cycle analyses on recycled goods, calculating the energy consumed from the moment they’re picked up by recycling trucks until they are processed into brand-new products. When compared with the amount of energy required to send the same goods to landfills or incinerators and make new products from scratch, the results vary dramatically, depending on the material. > > Aluminum, for example, requires 96 percent less energy to make from recycled cans than it does to process from bauxite. At the other end of the spectrum, recycled glass uses only about 21 percent less energy—but it still comes out ahead, according to a study by Washington-based environmental consultant Jeffrey Morris. **Recycled plastic bottles use 76 percent less energy** and newsprint about 45 percent less, he found. Across the board, the key factor is the energy intensity of extracting virgin materials, which is an order of magnitude higher than that of recovering the same material through recycling. “Even if you doubled the emissions from collecting recyclables, it wouldn’t come close,” Morris says. **Overall, he found, it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. And all of the collecting, hauling and processing of those recyclables adds just 0.9 million Btu.** > > That doesn’t mean the system is always efficient. The best recycling is closed-loop: Steel cans and glass bottles are recycled into more cans and bottles, which are in turn recyclable. **But some materials are currently “downcycled” into less desirable products that can be recycled no further. Soft-drink bottles made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate), for example, often end up as polyester fibers in clothing or carpets. It is possible to make new PET bottles from recycled stock, but the process is currently more expensive than making them from petroleum.** Supply and demand also come into play: Britain imports so much wine that recycled green glass is simply used as construction aggregate; recycling it consumes more energy than just sending the bottles to a landfill. > [@](#): > > **Thanks to life-cycle assessments, there’s no longer any serious debate among policymakers about whether recycling makes sense environmentally. The economic debate, however, still rages.** It’s surprisingly difficult to get a clear picture of how much municipal recycling programs cost compared to landfilling or incineration, because of hidden subsidies and long-term price guarantees given to all types of waste disposal. But it’s fair to say that, at this point, it generally costs a little more to recycle waste than it does to dump it. > > […]Those numbers are changing rapidly, though[…] ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plastic-recycling/490658/6 "2009-03-25T10:53:27Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > This is interesting enough, but I’m particularly interested in if recycling plastics from whatever I’d otherwise throw away makes any sense, not if “rest” bits and pieces get reused from manufacturing, which I would assume is a hell of a lot easier. Only the last sentence was about the reuse of plastic at the factory. It was just a cautionary statement that recycled didn’t always mean it was collected from consumers.