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Actor Ed Begley, Jr. is big into recycling. He had a show on H&G a while back that covered some of his efforts. His entire backyard (he owns a small suburban house) was full of containers for recycling - by type. He was sorting plastics by type.
Now, I respect the heck out of a guy that lives what he believes, but it sadly demonstrated how incredibly impractical recycling is - as we do it now.
Blended plastics and shredded plastics do recycle pretty well as second market goods (soda bottles become part of chairs) and filler (especially in road surfacing and light concrete uses) respectively. These kinds of recycling uses only require sorting from other material, not sorting by type. It doesn't matter if it's a PVC pipe or a plastic bag.
Given the advent of 3d printed housing, I really think blended extrusion might have a use there, as well. It's usually strong enough for a wall - but it also has better thermal properties and could be used as insulation between the concrete layers that could be extruded with the concrete. Once really big printers catch up to the little ones, of course.
I think the problem in recycling is that we use fifty year old tech to do the job.
FYI: Pyrex melts at a much higher temp than soda glass (which is most of the glass we use) so it's a lot like making a concrete wall with veins of glass in it - the Pyrex makes it harder to work the soda glass and if it does get incorporated, it mucks up the final piece. Since you have to melt soda glass around 2000F, straining out the Pyrex isn't terribly practical and once the mass has cooled, it's just not economical to bust it up, resort it and try again.
Those masses are probably recycled, however, as filler for road surfacing.
Now, I respect the heck out of a guy that lives what he believes, but it sadly demonstrated how incredibly impractical recycling is - as we do it now.
Blended plastics and shredded plastics do recycle pretty well as second market goods (soda bottles become part of chairs) and filler (especially in road surfacing and light concrete uses) respectively. These kinds of recycling uses only require sorting from other material, not sorting by type. It doesn't matter if it's a PVC pipe or a plastic bag.
Given the advent of 3d printed housing, I really think blended extrusion might have a use there, as well. It's usually strong enough for a wall - but it also has better thermal properties and could be used as insulation between the concrete layers that could be extruded with the concrete. Once really big printers catch up to the little ones, of course.
I think the problem in recycling is that we use fifty year old tech to do the job.
FYI: Pyrex melts at a much higher temp than soda glass (which is most of the glass we use) so it's a lot like making a concrete wall with veins of glass in it - the Pyrex makes it harder to work the soda glass and if it does get incorporated, it mucks up the final piece. Since you have to melt soda glass around 2000F, straining out the Pyrex isn't terribly practical and once the mass has cooled, it's just not economical to bust it up, resort it and try again.
Those masses are probably recycled, however, as filler for road surfacing.
) but if you can get by that it is very interesting and informative
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