What is In-house Plastic Recycling?

Post-industrial recycling (PIR) refers to reprocessing plastic wastes that are generated from industrial processes, most of time from the production of plastic products. When this plastic recycling process took place within the production plant, is called?in-house plastic recycling.

Why Plastic Producers Should Start In-House Plastic Recycling?

Many plastic producers have started to recycle their own plastic production wastes within the factory and returned the recycled pellets back to production or sell in the market. Considering global polymer price increase and the shortage to reach out to resources, producers found this is beneficial not only to reduce their carbon footprint but also to save costs by using more recycled content in production.

1. Recycling within the factory saves cost and time

When the plastic producers outsource the recycling of their production scraps, they need to handle some pre-steps such as classifying and storing a certain amount of the wastes in the facility that is worth enough to be sent out for recycling and transporting the wastes to the recycling facility.

In contrast, in-house recycling eliminates many of these steps and saves cost and time generated by the recycling process of production wastes such as edge trims, defected bags and films, plastic lumps, plastic bulks, and many more. Moreover, it gives freedom to the producers to optimize production and recycling processes, and minimize the storage time and space.

2. Creating a circular economy

Manufacturers are required to use more recycled materials in their plastic products. This lowers the cost of production as well as carbon footprint by minimizing virgin material usage. Especially film and bag manufacturers must obey governmental regulations in order to increase recycled materials usage to sell their products in certain markets such as Europe and US. In this case, one of the most efficient and less costly ways to acquire recycled resin is using your own post-industrial recycled material in the production.

3. Better control on recycled materials for production

To optimize recycling efficiency and obtain recycled pellets that have the same quality and characteristics can be easily achievable when the same input is reprocessed in a stable recycling machine. However, in some cases, even if the materials are made of the same polymer, the characteristics might be varied and hard to distinguish without advanced tools.

In terms of in-house recycling of plastics, manufacturers know their material characteristics very well, and the materials are most likely to be prevented from contamination and humidity. These can result in 100% of the same type of in-house recycled pellets back to the production lines directly. This helps the manufacturers maintain quality control of the final products.

For instance, many garbage bags, agricultural film, and construction film producers from Turkey and the Middle East, Southeast Asia, India, and Latin America have included POLYSTAR recycling machines in their production lines to re-use the recycled content in their own productions.

4. Creating economic value

Considering the increase in polymer prices and the opportunity cost of reaching out the virgin materials, in-house recycled resins are more valuable than ever in the market. Even though the manufacturers do not use 100% of these recycled pellets, they can trade in the market and turn their production scraps into economic profit.

Recycled content usage in production is encouraged by the law and industry. Therefore, there is a rising potential for in-house recyclers to sell their recycled pellets in the local and global markets. Injection molding, extrusion, and blow molding applications are most welcoming for recycled pellets. These recycled contents (mostly PE and PP grades) are often used in for the production of such as detergent bottles, battery boxes, broom fibers, pipes, furniture, profiles, toys, benches, recycling bins, and trash cans.

POLYSTAR provides various plastic recycling solutions for the evolving demands of plastic producers in?110 countries. To start recycling your factory plastic wastes in-house, contact POLYSTAR and we will help you to find a simple solution.

This?article?originally appeared on POLYSTAR.

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