Chinese New Year is officially over and it’s now the year of the DRAGON! First, I want to wish all the readers and supporters of recycledplastic.com a happy new year and wish everyone a successful business for 2012! 2011 has been a great year for me and I’m crossing my fingers that 2012 will be even better. For those that know me personally, I’m having another child (and I just found out it is going to be another boy).

The end and beginning of each year always has detrimental effects on the plastic recycling trade in China. For all those dealing with companies in China, October to February is always going to be rocky. This is because there is a week long holiday in October (National Week), Christmas and New Year in December, and Chinese New Year in January/February. On top of all the national holidays, environmental licenses expire on December 31st making the import of recycled goods unstable and usually more expensive. Its therefore important to time your shipments so you don’t accrue unnecessary fees at the ports.

Even now, environmental license quotas are tight and the government has increased the necessary paperwork required to renew licenses. The Chinese government is doing its job for making the average trader suffer, yet rewarding the larger, more established recyclers.

As the year just started, plastic prices is still somewhat unstable and while buyers have already come to my facilities to purchase, I still waiting for prices to settle before selling inventory. The plastic market recovers a bit now and peaks between March and June. When summer hits, electricity becomes an issue and some manufacturers are placed on schedules where they get electricity only 3-4 days out of the week. With this being said, it’s the perfect time to setup long term deals now and I’m already crossing my fingers for some of my larger deals to go through!

Lastly, I want to end by saying that I’ve learned a lot in 2011 and have learned some very valuable lessons. If you’re new to the recycling business, don’t give up, you’ll get there someday. Be smart, learn from your mistakes, try a new direction, and cross your fingers.

Pretty much everyone is going green these days, and thus, more value is placed on products made of recycled material. And among recyclable products, plastic has got to be the easiest to recycle since it doesn’t degrade like organic materials — you can either find new uses for any existing plastic bags and containers you may have, or send these products to a recycling plant to be remade into ‘new’ material. But have you ever wondered just what happens behind closed doors of a plastic recycling plant? Just what takes place to make something as seemingly indestructible as plastic into something new?

In an article by Heather Wansbrough and David Yuen on plastics recycling, they give us a quick rundown of what happens to plastic products in a recycling plant:

The 5-Step Plastic Recycling Process

1. Collection – Recycling facilities gather available recyclable material in their area, and from roadside collections, special recycling bins, or even directly from industries, post-consumer and post-industrial plastic items are collected.
2. Manual sorting – All items that are collected are then sorted according to the types indicated by the recycling symbols and codes on them. Unnecessary non-plastic materials found in the piles are promptly taken out.
3. Chipping – After sorting, the plastic products are prepared for melting by being cut into small pieces. The sorted plastic items are then fed into a machine which has sets of blades that slice through the material and break the plastic into tiny bits.
4. Washing – At this step, all residue of products originally contained in the plastic items and various other ‘contaminants’ (e.g. paper labels, dirt) are removed. A particular wash solution consisting of an alkaline, cationic detergent in water and a wash tank are used to effectively get rid of all the contaminants on the plastic material, making sure that all items are clean and ready for the final step. During washing, the wash tank agitator serves as an abrasive, stripping the adhesive off any labels and shredding any paper mixed in with the plastics. An alkaline, cationic detergent (which is similar to the formulas used in shampoos and fabric softeners) is used for the task of washing plastics because plastic materials have a positive surface charge, and only positively-charged chemical compounds (which in this case are cationic detergents) can properly clean them, effectively removing dirt and grease.
5. Pelleting – The chipped pieces of plastic are then melted down and put through a machine called an ‘extruder’. The extruder shapes the melted plastic into thin noodle-like tubes. The plastic tubes are then cut into small pellets by a set of rotating knives, which are then ready to be reused and remade into new items.

In the bag

Plastic bags go through the same five-step process as other plastic products, and are also washed and rinsed according to their plastic types. These also go through a ‘chipping’ stage, but in the case of plastic bags, these are chopped rather than chipped. The chopped shreds of plastic bags are then melted down accordingly to go through the pelleting stage.

What’s next?

The recycled plastic pellets are usually sold by the recycling company to other businesses which would then mold the plastic pellets into an assortment of products for various uses. Some products use a combination of recycled plastic pellets and virgin plastic ones. Though people tend to go for fully virgin plastic when available, the value of recycled plastic is undeniable, because recycling cuts down on landfill contribution and the process creates an avenue to reuse plastic, which is a non-renewable resource, which in turn reduces the rate of pollution and promotes overall wellness.

PlasticPlace.com believes in using recycled material in their products, and the company aims to popularize the idea of reusing and recycling through their own unique line of garbage bags made with 80% recycled material (10% of which is post-consumer, 70% post-industrial).

After spending several weeks developing and fine tuning the forum, the Plastic Recycling Forum is finally ready for public use! The goal of putting this forum together is to bring together enthusiasts and professionals to discuss topics, latest trends, and knowledge related to plastic recycling, plastic scrap, and recycled plastics. As plastic recycling is becoming an international concern, it’ll be great to hear what YOU have to say about new regulations, news, methods and technology.

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It’s the first day of the 2011 Resources Recycling Industry Exhibition. I woke up early, hopped onto the subway line 1, exited the Caobao Road (exit door 1), made a left, and walked about 5 minutes to the Shanghai Everbright Exhibition Center (East Hall). After a painless registration process which requires a business card showing you’re in the recycling industry, I was in with a yellow registration tag dangling around my neck.

It’s 9:30 AM and most of the exhibitionists were still setting up their booths. At the entrance, the exhibitors were greeting visitors with a smile and passing out company brochures. They were eager to make the most of their exhibition fees.

All in all, while I didn’t see anything super innovative, I had a wonderful time chatting with some of the companies which ranged from plastic scrap suppliers/buyers to plastic recycling machinery technicians (pelletizers, washing lines, shredders/crushers/granulators, etc…). There were also companies in the rubber recycling industry sharing their developments.

As I’m in the market for a LDPE washing/pelletizing line, I spent most of my time speaking with the technicians at the recycling machinery booths, which were mostly from the Zhangjiagang/Jiangsu area. The companies offered fully automated lines run by conveyor belts with prices between 100K-200K USD. While you would think a machine of this value would at least offer a 5-10 year warranty, the standard warranty is only 1 year. What does that tell you about quality? After the one year period, repair costs will be charged “at cost”.

I also met several suppliers/buyers of plastic scrap that I had wonderful conversations with. Again, while I didn’t learn or see anything innovation, it’s always a pleasure meeting new friends in the plastic recycling industry.

I was in Ningbo (Zhejiang Province) several days ago to visit a friend that recently purchased a TiTech Optical Sorter. Basically, the machine uses a conveyor belt to drive shredded plastic pieces under an optical sensor which then uses an air-jet to pick or “shoot” out the desired plastic type. While the optical sorter can only pick out 1 plastic type at a time, it’s able to separate a wide variety of plastic scrap including ABS, ABS/PC, HIPS, PS, PET, PETG, PVC, PP, etc…

This is definitely a step up from the manual separation of e-scrap plastics, however, the machine has many limitations:

1. The plastic you feed into the conveyor needs to be around 3-5cm.
2. It takes 2-3 passes before the plastic is completely sorted.
3. The sorter is not very sensitive to black or dark pieces.
4. The regrinds need to be clean or relatively clean.

One of the largest issues with plastic recycling is sorting by plastic type. If we can perfect this technology, it would make the recycling of plastic a much simpler process which will lead to the increase of plastics recycled.