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Polypropylene Uses
̶0;Virgin,̶1; or first-use polypropylene, is used in food packaging, plastic films, medicine bottles and appliances. Because the Food and Drug Administration has concerns over food exposure to contaminated plastic, it is more practical to restrict recycled polypropylene to non-food applications such as garden tools, ice scrapers, cases for lead-acid batteries, trash cans and storage bins.
Challenges in Plastics Recycling
Plastic recycling is far from an ideal situation. The materials come in several chemical varieties, each having different properties such as strength, flexibility and melting point; mixing plastic types can work poorly or not at all. For example, polypropylene, used for bottle caps, has a higher melting point than polyethylene, used in soda bottles. Processing the two plastics together is difficult, so they must be separated during recycling.
Collection and Sorting
The exact process of recycling differs somewhat from one municipality to another. Some cities require residents to separate plastic items from paper and cans while others put all the acceptable materials in the same container. Waste haulers collect refuse from recycling bins and truck it to a recycling center. If all the recycling is collected together, the recycler separates metal, paper and plastic items from one another with a combination of hand and machine sorting techniques.
Grinding and Remanufacturing
Some recycling techniques take in different types of plastic refuse, processing them with chemicals and machines until each type is separated from the others. The process removes pigments from the plastics, returning the materials to their original, uncolored state. The separated plastics are ground into pellets and packaged in containers. Manufacturers buy the pellets and melt them into batches of liquefied plastic, which are then formed into new products.