Plastics recycling

This topic comes up numerous times a year and with the multiple recent threads on CRT recycling, I figured if people started looking into to that more, now that we have confirmed a US location that takes (charges for) the glass, many scrappers may be looking for outlets for the plastic scrap from these. Not to mention the other E-waste you deal with.

In the process of my internet surfing, I have located a company that seems interested in working with E-scrappers to handle their plastic. I personally have not contacted them. Kind of hope one of you will do that and report back. The companies name is Maine Plastics and this a link to a page on their web site:

Maine Plastics: Material Wanted

Almost missed this thread. Shot them an email for ya, hope to hear something soon as I too am interested in what they have to say.

-Matt

Me too. I've spent a lot of time this year looking for a plastic buyer. I've also thrown away about 3000 pounds of plastic.

I contacted them and got a very quick response from a guy named David. FWIW, here's a quote from him:

It is going to be challenging to find anyone willing to pickup your material unless you have at least 5,000 pounds, probably more. The plastic value is not that great especially in an unbaled form.

I assume you are going to generate metal as well. I would press the local metal yard to take your plastic when you drop off the metal

This was good info for me since I realized that I would not be able to generate anything close to that weight in my "basement operation". So hopefully this will be helpful info for others.

I'm going to pass this on to a local recycling facility. The last time I talked to them they had around 12,000 pounds of mixed computer plastic that was baled and could not get rid of it. I use to give them all my plastic but they won't take any more. The local metal yards around here aren't going to take plastic so until I find someone who will, it will go to the landfill.

so basically talk to your local yard about their pricing - that's fair given the price to ship stuff.

Originally Posted by logansryche

so basically talk to your local yard about their pricing - that's fair given the price to ship stuff.

Good luck finding a yard that will take plastic.

Fortunately here in Syracuse we have Bodine that does metal recycling, United that accepts general stuff and Ben Weisman in Sovay(they were going to take some stuff but my phone wasn't working and I doubt they'd be open on Christmas Eve) that takes general stuff.

Mixed computer plastic is not easy to move- we bale over 50,000lbs of it a year.

I was just looking into another co here in NY that says they buy plastic. Now, is computer plastic considered PVC or ABS. I haven't been able to find a stamp or anything on what I've been dismantling.

I thought so, I thought PVC was thick stuff.

Plastic from computer cases is almost always (if not always) ABS.

Do a google search for different grades of plastic. I've scrapped a lot of computers and business phone systems and phones and at one time had a list of the types I ran across. There were about 6 or 7 different grades and ABS made up only about a third of all the plastic I accumulated. Some of the newer plastic had either the triangle with the number in the center or the letters on it. A lot of the older plastic was not marked.

I have seen ABS, PS, HIPS, PVC in computers.

Originally Posted by jimicrk

Do a google search for different grades of plastic. I've scrapped a lot of computers and business phone systems and phones and at one time had a list of the types I ran across. There were about 6 or 7 different grades and ABS made up only about a third of all the plastic I accumulated. Some of the newer plastic had either the triangle with the number in the center or the letters on it. A lot of the older plastic was not marked.

Right, that's what I'm running into a lot of. Older stuff that's not marked.