Why can’t we recycle plastic in the same way we do for metal? Melt it and remold it?
In: Technology
One way to think of plastic is like a weave of long ‘fibers’ similar to a cloth, but much smaller. When it’s originally made its quite strong because those fibers are so long and tangled together. Every time it gets recycled those fibers get pulled apart and many get broken into smaller and smaller pieces. Eventually those pieces of the original fibers are to small to weave together to hold a structure anymore and we don’t have great methods for decomposing them back into the original components to make fresh new plastic ‘fibers’ or a eco-friendly by-product.
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