A Brief History of Plastics
Categories: Food for Thought, Polybags for Professionals
Predicting the future of recycling is no easy matter. From polybags to custom plastic bags, and very much including plastics recycling!
One thing you can take to the bank, though: with all of the smart people devoted to creating better plastics recycling solutions, the future will be brighter than most of us can imagine.
Case in point: A brand-new process developed in Mexico recycles plastics without the use of a single drop of water!
It’s hard to take in just how revolutionary this is! Until now, the recycling of plastics has been both water- and energy-intensive. Normally, plastic was washed with detergents and then pulverized into small beads. Those pieces were then dried in order to crystalize, a process that required exposing it to temperatures of 180 degrees Celsius and then cooling it back down with water.
The new process, though, is simpler. It also requires less space. And, incredibly, the beads are produced are of higher quality.
There is no way to overemphasize just how amazing this is! If you had told people in the industry that waterless plastic recycling was just around the corner five years ago, let alone ten years ago, they would have, frankly, laughed at you.
And not because they didn’t want to believe it could happen. It just looked too difficult to achieve. But ingenuity, a desire to protect the environment, and the profit motive sometimes form a powerful union, and that’s just what has happened in the case of the new Mexican recycling method.
The technology being brought to bear uses special walls that mold the plastic into the desired pellet shape and cool those pellets at the same time.
And we’re just so incredibly excited about the future of plastics recycling! It is a great time to be in the industry as plastic bag manufacturer! We can’t wait to continue this level of innovation with our polybags and custom plastic bags.