At Palm Environmental, we have our own Plastic Recycling Facility (PRF) making recycling your plastic waste with us as efficient as it can be. We’re proud of our ability to contribute discarded plastic waste as a valuable resource within the circular economy. This enables us to support our clients to reduce emissions that would be created in manufacturing brand new plastics from raw materials.
Sorting plastic waste is an important part of the plastic recycling process, as, when sorted correctly, higher recycling rates can be achieved and more plastic can be turned into new, useful products. The sorting process enables commercial waste management to be more efficient and effective, helps to reduce costs and also, potentially enables more revenue to be generated from the creation of useful recycled material. We’re proud to be able to support our clients with this process.
How plastics are recycled.
At a plastic Recycling Facility, the collected recyclable plastic materials go through a number of processes. These include washing, first sorting, second sorting and control and then shredding and extrusion.
These processes see the plastics first have any dust, dirt and packaging labels removed from them before being sorted in terms of colour and thickness. Plastics are then shredded into smaller pieces and are finally converted into pellets that can be used to produce new plastic products.
Plastic recycling processes
There are many different types of plastic recycling processes that can take place at a Plastic Recycling Facility like ours.
Mechanical Recycling
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) are easily recycled and are often turned into new plastic drinks bottles. These types of plastics are most commonly recycled through ‘mechanical recycling’. This is where a product is recycled without the need to change its chemical structure in a significant way. With these types of plastics there is very little negative impact on quality from the recycling process
Chemical Recycling
This form of plastic recycling sees the chemical structure of the material changed through processes which include pyrolysis, gasification, hydro-cracking, depolymerisation. These processes enable the plastic recycling to be scaled up. Plastics are made up of long hydrocarbon chains. Chemical or thermal processes break these down to enable them to feed new chemical reactions which produce new materials.
Dissolution recycling
This purification process is used for recycling mixed plastic waste and involves the polymer in these products being dissolved in a solvent. The purified polymer can then be separated from the rest of the waste, without changing its chemical properties. Examples of the types of polymers that can be removed from mixed waste plastic in this way include PVC, polystyrene, nylon and polypropylene.
Organic Recycling
This involves treating biodegradable plastics microbiologically. This can be achieved using aerobic conditions – also known as composting – or under anaerobic conditions, which is known as biogasification. In this way, certain polymers can be converted into stabilised organic residues, as well as carbon dioxide, methane and water.
