Why can’t we recycle plastic in the same way we do for metal? Melt it and remold it?
In: Technology
I’m not happy with the ELI5 here.
Some plastics are like ramen noodles, overlapping each other and tangling up, but each noodle is distinct and separable. You might lose a lot of noodles by breaking them, but ultimately the end product is separated ramen noodles that you can remix together again. Keep doing this and eventually you don’t have strands of noodle anymore, just bits and pieces.
Other plastics are more like a sheet of lasagna, where everything is physically connected. You can’t separate it then mix it back together like the ramen, it’s just not the same thing anymore and would be more like fettuccine.
These are called thermoplastic and thermosets, respectively. Some thermoplastic can sorta be melted then remolded. 3D printers basically do this. Another issue is impurities. Impurities can completely ruin a plastic molecule from forming or binding the way it should. Metal doesn’t usually have as much of an issue with this, as the metal forms crystal structures rather than something like an amorphous structure (for ELI5 think random arrangement rather than orderly).
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