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Caught On Tape: Plastic Bottle Recycling Facilities

By Rain Noe - June 7, 2011

in Object Culture | Sustainable Design

Do you know how plastic bottles are actually recycled? The amount of energy that goes into it is pretty insane, as you'll see in this video below of the Ecostar recycling facility in Wisconsin. The amount of steps—not to mention electricity, water and manpower—that need to be taken to go from a bale of plastic bottles into safe, useable material is pretty staggering.

What's even more staggering is that as energy-intensive as recycling is, it still gives off only half the carbon that's produced when creating virgin materials. It makes you wonder why we don't spend more time looking at more efficient ways to convey fluids, or if our current system of plastic bottles is really the best thing mankind can come up with.As a side note, Plastic News, where we picked up this video link, points out that Ecostar's parent company, Placon, mulled over shooting the video tour themselves or hiring a pro video company. They opted for the latter, as you can tell by the video's production quality. For any company trying to make this decision, compare the video above with the one below, which we also found at Plastics News. It's of Marglen Industries' PET recycling plant in Georgia and was shot by the International Bottled Water Association. While we certainly appreciated that the IBWA took the time to produce the video, you can clearly see the difference between hiring a pro vs. DIY when it comes to producing videos. Both convey similar information, but we think you'll find one makes it vastly easier to absorb the data.

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Plasticplace.net

13 years ago

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Watching the whole process amazed me. It was an interesting tour on how it's done. be thankful to those advanced technology.
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Becky Stern

13 years ago

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Agreed about the video production. If you're going to film inside a factory, you will always at least need pro audio. =]
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Jon Hart

13 years ago

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That sorting machine is amazing- launching bottles over a gap and shooting the unacceptable bits down with jets of air is truly awesome.
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Al Roderick

13 years ago

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As with all other things, the definition of "Best" is different for everyone. From the perspective of a corporation that sells liquids and doesn't have to pay for any environmental or disposal costs, the it is the perfect material: dirt cheap, light, long lasting, easy to color, generally quite chemically stable, and versatile. From the perspective of the people, societies, generations and governments that need to clean up after them... not so much.

Three-part solution:
Use plant sources (transgenic or traditional) to generate long chain polymers, then refine them just as with fossil petroleum. Reduce the amount used by using more concentrates and filtered or solar-distilled tap water wherever possible. Burn trash in high-temperature waste-to-energy incinerators that break the chemicals down to pure elements and simple compounds (no toxics). This eliminates the trucks and energy needed for recycling and adds 24 hour baseload energy to the grid, and uses the atmosphere as the return leg of the cycle. We can't grow enough plants to replace all our fuel, but we can certainly grow enough to replace our plastic.
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Tom Lauria -- IBWA

13 years ago

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Thank-you for featuring our new video on PET recycling. The communications team at IBWA is proud to feature do-it-yourself (DIY) video work because that is what YouTube is all about. Sure, we have professionally produced video productions but our audience reacts more positively to direct, informal presentations made by our teenage presenter. Businesses that over-refine their message, especially on YouTube, can come-off robotically while our hand-made work speaks to the sincerity we feel for the subject matter.
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