How does recycling work!?
Recycling means taking a product or material at the end of its useful life and turning it into a usable raw material to make another product. Paper: Newspaper, white paper, mixed paper, cardboard, and telephone books can be recycled. White paper is the most valuable because of its quality and versatility. The process for creating new products from recycled paper is explained here: • The paper is separated by type/grade. The separated paper is then put into a large vat (similar to a giant kitchen mixer) and mixed with water creating a product called “slurry”. • The slurry is spread on racks and big rollers push all the water out. Once dry, the paper is then rolled up for later cutting into whatever size is needed for the new product. • The slurry is also the basis for paperboard (used for cereal boxes, etc.), corrugated cardboard, telephone books, and newsprint. • By adding wood or cotton fibers the slurry is turned into office-grade paper. Unlike glass or steel, paper degrades each tim
At its best, recycling is a five-stage, closed-loop process, beginning with the purchase of recycled or recyclable products. After the products are used, they are collected for recycling, prepared for shipping, shipped to market, and finally reprocessed into new products or materials. The new products are then available to be purchased and used to continue the cycle.
Pick up a soda bottle and look at the bottom. It will have either have “PET” on its base, or a number enclosed in the recycling sign. When you drop this bottle into the recycling bin, it’s sent to a separation center where different plastics are separated by family type, either by hand or by machine. The separated plastic parts are then ground up into fine chips, which are then fed into a machine called an extruder. There the chips are melted and re-formed into pellets that can be used to make benches, pots, artificial lumber, and many other items.
