B
Bret Cahill
Guest
They keep hyping plastic recycling issues like it's politically correct.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-plastic-america-global-crisis
If minor low cost changes are made to plastic containers beforehand it may be easier than they think to make recycling profitable.
Most industrial separation processes don't have the luxury of designing what is going to be separated, i.e. wheat from the chaff, etc., around what will be doing the separation. The designer of the separation process only has one side to work with.
The yuge advantage of designing plastic bottles and the waste separation equipment around each other could very well be enough to off set the one or 2 order of magnitude lower value/lb of the end product.
The first solution, mostly for explanation purposes here, would be a special kind of Velcro where both surfaces are specifically designed only for each other. The hooks only fit and hang up on certain size or shape loops designed only for those hooks. Other Velcros don't work.
Polyethylene bottles would have one size or shape, polyester another, PVC, another, etc.
Other hooks -- and the plastics associated with them -- just fall off the conveyor belt onto other conveyor belts until all the plastic bottles end up in the right bin.
Optical taggants might be more realistic, even cheaper for the plastic bottle manufacturer as well as the separation equipment manufacturer. Lasers on the separation machine see the right color reflected from a water bottle and a short compressed air blast knocks it off the conveyor belt. Skippy peanut butter does something similar with burned peanuts.
These changes could be accomplished without government requirements as it's easy to be politically correct if it doesn't cost over 0.3 cents / bottle.
To keep the bottles clean nano and other surface treatments could keep the catsup from sticking so very little water is necessary to clean the plastic..
Bret Cahill
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-plastic-america-global-crisis
If minor low cost changes are made to plastic containers beforehand it may be easier than they think to make recycling profitable.
Most industrial separation processes don't have the luxury of designing what is going to be separated, i.e. wheat from the chaff, etc., around what will be doing the separation. The designer of the separation process only has one side to work with.
The yuge advantage of designing plastic bottles and the waste separation equipment around each other could very well be enough to off set the one or 2 order of magnitude lower value/lb of the end product.
The first solution, mostly for explanation purposes here, would be a special kind of Velcro where both surfaces are specifically designed only for each other. The hooks only fit and hang up on certain size or shape loops designed only for those hooks. Other Velcros don't work.
Polyethylene bottles would have one size or shape, polyester another, PVC, another, etc.
Other hooks -- and the plastics associated with them -- just fall off the conveyor belt onto other conveyor belts until all the plastic bottles end up in the right bin.
Optical taggants might be more realistic, even cheaper for the plastic bottle manufacturer as well as the separation equipment manufacturer. Lasers on the separation machine see the right color reflected from a water bottle and a short compressed air blast knocks it off the conveyor belt. Skippy peanut butter does something similar with burned peanuts.
These changes could be accomplished without government requirements as it's easy to be politically correct if it doesn't cost over 0.3 cents / bottle.
To keep the bottles clean nano and other surface treatments could keep the catsup from sticking so very little water is necessary to clean the plastic..
Bret Cahill