about plastics - Page 2

Well, there you go, I stand corrected!! Its been a long, long, long time since my plastics classes in high school.

So, if ABS is a therm-form plastic, I wonder why there isn't as much of a market for its recycling? Or perhaps there is, such as in big metros, and we just don't hear about it, although as I said, I know there were at least a couple of guys on SMF that was selling ABS but getting almost nothing for it a pound.

I suppose that as common as we think ABS may be, the stuff that touches food items, such as polypropylene and polyethylene, is just soooo much more common, that its easily recycled. And, with most metro trash collecting, consumers are giving away (basically mandated in my case) for free. The downstream companies that are contracted with my metro's landfill don't have to "pay" for these products at all, except for the time and material need to haul, sort, and transport to an end-user. The recycling of #1 and #2 plastics in my metro probably wouldn't pencil out if the actual consumer had to get a little coin for turning it in. That's one reason why I don't give them my aluminum cans, I can make some coin myself. If I had a country place, I would save my steel food cans as well, after washing and crushing them, and take them into the yard for cash after getting enough of them to make the trip worthwhile. I'm sure the down-stream sorters of the municipal recycling system are making cash off of steel food cans but again, they are getting big volume and don't have to "purchase' the product...

Thanks Dakota Rog. Principal Investigators. I knew something didn't feel right with that. Has anyone done any research into the pyrolysis of mixed plastics?