Plastic waste

Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing the material into useful products, sometimes completely different in form from their original state. Since plastic is not normally biodegradable, recycling it is part of global efforts to reduce plastic in the waste stream, especially the approximately eight million metric tonnes of waste plastic that enter the earth’s ocean every year. Plastic recycling includes melting down soft drink bottles and then casting them as plastic chairs and tables. However, this kind of “recycling” is rather a misnomer since plastic beverage bottles (soda, juice, milk) are never truly reformed into new beverage bottles, as this requires virgin plastic. So there is actually no true cycle in the “recycling” of plastic beverage containers, which actually and more precisely should be referred to as “downcycling”. Plastics are also recycled during the manufacturing process of plastic goods such as polyethylene film and bags. A percentage of the recycled pellets are then re-introduced into the main production operation. This closed-loop operation has taken place since the 1970s and has made the production of some plastic products amongst the most efficient operations today.