Plastic recycling goes on! Last time, we explained to you the functioning of the extrusion process, which is fundamental to get to the step we’ll talk about today: filtration.
Filtration is an essential step, for it directly concerns the final quality of the recycled plastic, so that it can be effectively reused to make new products.
As a matter of fact, plastic materials may contain a small percentage of extraneous contamination, which lowers the quality of the resulting material and may cause major issues in the recycling phase. That’s why all these ‘foreign’ materials must be removed through a specific filtration technology.
What’s plastic contamination?
Some contamination may be caused, for instance, by paper (labels) – which is a very common, extraneous material, but also by aluminium, wood, rubber and not-melted plastics.
After having been melted by using an extruder, recycled plastic must be filtered to be reused. This special technology, which had been explained in our previous article, has a primary function to melt the plastic material, which had been previously crushed into flakes through the grinding process.
After having melted the plastic material through an extruder, the so-called filtration takes place: plastic is filtered through a specific machine to remove anything that does not fit the specific, treated material. Only by doing so can we make sure of getting a result, which will be as homogeneous as possible and contamination-free!
Did you know that…
We can facilitate this recycling phase starting right from our own homes? Just like that! We only need to pay attention to how we dispose our waste. For example, we can detach the different materials like plastic, paper, and aluminum before throwing them into the container or containers provided for by municipal regulations*. By doing so, both the selection step and subsequent filtration process are faster. This is a mayor contribution that gives us all as consumers the chance to see the rewards of our efforts to dispose our waste correctly with a quality recycling – for both the sake of the environment and ours.
Recycling magic does not end here – follow us and find out what happens after plastic materials have been filtered!
*For information about the appropriate separate collection method, please contact your municipality of residence.