Hello Everyone
First of what a amzing forum you have here…
Ill give you a quick background my name is brandon i am involved in all aspects to metal recycling .
I have just started learning about plasti so i am a real newbie.
The main reason i was looking for plastic reuse or recycling is because my company has very large volume of mixed plastic waste and i am trying to figure out what we could do better as company for our environment.
We have electrical wire recycling equipment seperating the plastic from the copper and Aluminum.
Does any one have any ideas where i voukd start to figure out the type of plastic i have or what we can do with it
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Please don’t take this message as a “don’t bother” type post as I truly believe their is a huge market awaiting a discovered use that we can commonly replicate as “little guys” in recycling, however my unintentional demoralising speach starts now:
While i’m hoping more viable solutions appear, unfortunately insulated cable plastic is hard to deal with.
In part this has to do with the fact that depending on each cables properties (for example UV resistance) many unknown additives may have been used which at best might cause small issues with processing or at worst react with each other.
On top of this a lot of the cables are made from Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) which currently seems very hard for “smaller scale (meaning pretty much anything but a factory dedicated to handling PVC melt/extrusion)” recycling thanks to the fact it can give off gasses like chlorine when you try and melt it.
Adding on to this, while most of your cable insulation could be PVC, it isn’t the only type of insulation used meaning you could have a ton of PVC mixed with random amounts of Polyethylene (PE), Polypropylene (PP), Polyurethane (PUR), Chlorinated Polyethylene (CPE), Nylon and probably some others I haven’t given thought to.
With all that said though I would love for people to jump on and reply with some new breakthrough as I do believe their is a huge potential for salvage yards etc. with mindsets like yours to be able to save on waste fees and increase profit all while feeling good “doing the right thing”.
Here is a link to an interesting article, giving a good starting point of the process,
recycling electrical cable PVC sheath.
https://www.ipoint-systems.com/blog/to-recycle-or-not-to-recycle-pvc-cable-waste-is-the-question/