Recycled plastic industry

                                                     source: aos.iacpublishinglabs.com

In the year 2010, there is an average of 8 million tonnes of plastic floating around in the ocean and this number continues to rise. The cost of producing new plastic materials in the year 2006 is $4.5 billion for 5.5 billion pounds of PET bottles (Science and Earth, 2016). That's an average of $0.80 a bottle without taking into account production and operation cost. Companies such as Coca cola are incorporating more recycled plastic in their bottles thus producing a bottle that contains less resin and allowing the liquid in the bottle to retain it's shape. Nestle knew that more recycled plastic would be needed to produce the packaging for their products so they have invested in processing infrastructure to do their part for the environment (Coalition and Coalition, 2016). Recycled plastic is also cheaper compared to virgin plastic as the reduction in resin content in a single plastic bottle could translate into saving as much as $1.5 billion worth of plastic in the bottling industry.  Also in a world with finite resources, the act of utilizing more recycled plastic could be manifested into a drastic reduction of energy consumption by 80-90%. So the main point of this argument is, if these 8 million tonnes of plastic can be utilized for recycling, imagine the amount of cost that can be saved and the amount of energy that is saved. Plastics derived directly from crude oil takes about 62-108Mega joules of energy (LOW-TECH MAGAZINE, 2016). Producing using recycled plastic takes only 34% of that thus saving the other 66% to be utilized for other more useful things.

written by: Benjamin

Reference

LOW-TECH MAGAZINE. (2016). How much energy does it take (on average) to produce 1 kilogram of the following materials?. [online] Available at: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/what-is-the-embodied-energy-of-materials.html [Accessed 14 Nov. 2016].

Coalition, P. and Coalition, P. (2016). Is it Time to Rethink Recycling?. [online] Plastic Pollution Coalition. Available at: http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2016/2/10/is-it-time-to-rethink-recycling [Accessed 14 Nov. 2016].

Science, L. and Earth, P. (2016). Does Recycling Plastic Cost More Than Making It?. [online] Live Science. Available at: http://www.livescience.com/32231-does-recycling-plastic-cost-more-than-making-it.html [Accessed 14 Nov. 2016].