Recycling of Plastics
As a lot of plastic is wasted and put into the landfill, there is not as much recycling being done. One solution manufactures have been inquiring on is the use of plastic waste as a fuel source. This would be effective with reducing landfill , but still recovering energy. Although this could be a potential solution, this would depend on using the proper materials. Plastics containing fluorine, bromine, and chlorine would be a risk for emitting toxic pollutants in combustion reactions. Because of this risk, plastic waste must be separated into different categories and coded to identify the polymer type for the type of recycling that it would process through. This therefore ensured that only “eco-friendly” plastics were being recycled and used as an energy source so that the amount of toxic pollutants emitted into the environment is reduced. (Reusch, 2013) Here is a table of the abbreviations necessary for the coding of plastics.