It is no secret that the world recycles less than 10% of all plastics produced every year. You can look online and easily find the statistics yourself. And yet, a much larger percentage of industrial plastics are successfully recycled. So why the disparity between industrial and residential plastics? Sorting.
It may sound like an overly simplistic answer to you but sorting truly is the Achilles’ heel of plastic recycling. Sorting is what dooms municipal recycling programs from the very start. Likewise, eliminating the need to sort is why industrial recyclers like Tennessee-based Seraphim Plastics can make a tidy profit doing what they do.
Sorting from Other Materials
The sorting issue rears its ugly head in two ways, the first being the need to sort plastics from other materials. Take your typical curbside recycling bin. In that bin you will find multiple types of plastic along with glass and paper, at minimum. If a homeowner is especially careless, you might also find trash.
Whether done at the curb or at a recycling center, plastics need to be sorted from other materials before any recycling can take place. But that’s only half the equation. There is a secondary sorting that needs to be done.
Sorting Plastics by Type
Once plastics are sorted from other materials, they also need to be sorted by type. As you know, consumer plastics are labeled with a number ranging from 1 to 7. The first six numbers refer to specific types of plastic. The seventh is a catch-all for remaining plastics that do not fit into any of the other six categories.
A good example is PET, which bears the number 1. It is the most commonly utilized plastic for consumer goods and the most recycled plastic in the world. Seraphim makes good money recycling PET. But here’s the thing: they only purchase bales of already separated and cleaned PET bottles.
Speaking of clean bottles, this is another big issue for residential recycling. When consumers do not make the effort to clean out plastic food containers, the containers end up going to the recycling facility as contaminated material. An entire load can be rejected because of one contaminated food container.
Technology to the Rescue
So how do we solve the sorting issue? Some say the answer lies in technology. They look to solutions like one being offered in Australia, a solution developed by researchers at the University of Technology Sydney. They have come up with an AI-enabled sorting machine that does all of the heavy lifting, so to speak.
Shoppers in Australia already take their recyclable materials back to the same stores where products were originally bought. They are expected to sort materials and put them in the appropriate bins. But UT Sydney’s solution is all automatic.
They offer a tech-heavy bin that accepts all plastics along with glass. Through the use of sensors, cameras, artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT), they have built a machine that can easily identify different materials and sort them on-the-fly.
Sorting Is Not That Hard
The impetus for the researchers’ invention is the belief that sorting recyclables is hard for consumers. People do not know the difference between plastics, so they just throw them all in the same bin. But wait. All they need to do is look for the number.
The fact that Australian residents can manually sort recyclables at the store and get the materials into the right bins proves that sorting is not that hard. What we really have here is an issue of willingness. And that’s why sorting is the Achilles’ heel of plastic recycling.
