HOW TO RECYCLE EVA and RUBBER

Polymer Craft Research about plastic
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Hey Hey!
My family and I own a shoe store in Kenosha, WI and I’m looking for some help in finding extra uses for our waste. We have a full repair and custom orthotic lab in house which produces approximately 10 pounds a week of finely ground waste consisting of EVA, crepe rubber, cork, subortholene, and poron. I’m a shoe man, not a materials engineer so is there a way to recycle this material the same way as plastics? I can’t imagine the heating process would be exactly the same as it would for plastics. I’d be happy to post some pictures of the materials if that would help. Depending on the durometer of the resulting recycled material, I was thinking I could make a post it board for around the shop or possibly turn this into a business, collecting other shop’s similar waste and making a viable commercial product out of it. Anyways, one step at a time. Let me know if you guys (and gals) have any ideas.

Ciao Ciao
Tony chips Chiappetta
Chiappetta Shoes
Kenosha, WI USA
http://www.chiappettashoes.com

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Both plastics can be recycled, but you would need to experiment with melting both kinds of plastics to see how the final product could behave.

Here are a few resources:

EVA melting point: 250°F (96°C)

Rubber melting point: 356°F (180°C) or 750°F~1000°F if it’s tires/vulcanized rubber When you melt rubber, it “Devulcanizes“, which means it loses elasticity and will need to be vulcanized again depending on what you want to do with the final rubber product. Also, melting vulcanized rubber releases toxic gases that are highly contaminant for the environment, and can affect your health if you breath the fumes.