Plastic Recycling Essay

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Recycling means collecting and sorting waste for the purpose of producing new products. In Malaysia, the recycling program was officially introduced on December 2, 2000 and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (ministry) has determined that the 11 November of each year as National Recycling Day. Recycling process involves a variety of solid waste including plastic. Plastics is the solid waste that cannot be decomposed, so the recycling process of this material can help reduce the quantities of solid wastes in landfill and reduce the pollution of water and air. This material needs to go through several phase of process before it become new grade of plastic in suitable format. In general, plastic recycling process can be classified into five stages which are sorting, washing, shredding, identify and classify, and extruding (refer to Figure 1 Appendix 1).
The first stages of plastic recycling process are sorting this material. There are two sources of plastics, “plastics for recycling come from two main sources: post consumer plastics and post industrial plastics”(Wansbrough, n.a, p. 4). Post consumer plastics is unused plastics that are collected either in garbage bins on the street or in the recycling bin. While the post industrial plastics is the unused plastics from industry such as off cuts or damaged batches. Then, this material will be collected by the recycling company and will be taken to a recycling plant for restructuring activities. At this stage, the plastic will be divided according to the criteria of manufacturing a chemical composition. Plastic cannot be directly recycled for manufacturing consists of a variety of materials including polymer composition and sulfur. This plastic will then be classified accordi...

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...rotating in hoper will rip the plastic into small waste for further process.
In conclusion, there are five stages of plastic recycling process and the material needs to go through this process to be in suitable format for reuse. Sorting, washing, shredding, identify and classify, and extruding the plastics can make the plastics safe for reuse by consumers. Plastics recycling have brought many advantages to people by preserving the environment as plastic waste impacted very significantly to the natural environment. This cycle is very important in reducing the production of natural resources leading to environmental degradation. It also helps to reduce the number of plastic bottles wasted which will undoubtedly pollute the environment and our lives. All in all, recycling plastic can help in maintaining the conservation and preservation of nature towards the better.

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