Your Questions About Recycling
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Filed under Recycling Q & A
Michael asks…
How much money can you make saving and recycling plastic bottle caps?
Idk why but I just started collecting the tops off of soda bottles and juice jugs and I’m trying to find ways to recycle them. But if I take them to the recycling company, how much money would I get for them?
The Expert answers:
Nothing.
Plastic for recycling has little cash value due to no markets and such a low price for virgin plastic resins.
The soft plastic used for those items you are saving has no market at all. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
If you want to stay on top of those market developments, you can find them at these websites with a little research.
Http://www.wastenews.com
http://www.resourcerecyclingmagazine.com
Sharon asks…
how do you start a plastic recycling plant/company?
how do you start a plastic recycling plant/company?
Can you give me details? or where I can find details? including start up cost etc?
not in my country my dear (TRINIDAD)
The Expert answers:
Money lots and lots of money
environmental reviews
do you have enough raw materials
do you have purchasers for the finished product
research recycling programs in the U.S.
Look at the big boys and how they do it
and don’t forget lots of money
Mark asks…
Could you list all the possible ways of recycling a plastic bottle?
I have an Environmental Science project coming up and need to write down all the possible ways of recycling and reusing a household waste article (in my case it’s plastic bottles, etc)
The Expert answers:
Well i think you need to visit http://www.alpcorecycling.com/ here i have found all kind of recycling ways. I think i helped you
Steven asks…
Do you wash your recycling plastic, glass, aluminum before you put it in the recycle bin?
Seems kind of contrary to the point of recycling if you wash it with the wasted water and soap and energy for heating the water. However, it is somewhat disgusting to have bacteria gathering in cans and jars in your recycle bin for the week.
Anybody have any good solutions (or opinions) on this?
The Expert answers:
I usually give them a quick rinse, but I don’t wash them like the dishes. It seems cleaner, but is probably not necessary. Anyway, all water is recycled. Water is a renewable resource that gets recycled by rain falling.
George asks…
How much can I get for recycling plastic bottles?
How much can you get for a pound of plastic?
How much money can I get for a pound of plastic in NJ?
Where can you take plastic water bottles to get money?
The Expert answers:
To be honest you could get a round $20 with two loaded black bags. I do!!
Helen asks…
My city doesn’t have a plastic recycling program. How would I go about starting one?
We do have a recycling program for paper, metal, and glass, just nothing set for plastic.
The Expert answers:
Start with the Public School district. They already have the infrastructure in place. Start using their facilities to campaign your good
Carol asks…
Can you recycle a plastic bottle that has rust stains in it or will the recycling center not accept it?
Can you recycle a plastic bottle that has rust stains in it (and by rust i mean covered in orange not just a little) or will the recycling center not accept it? I would not think they wouldn’t recycle it but im just curious
The Expert answers:
It doesn’t matter what condition a bottle is in, all redemption centers should take them.
Daniel asks…
plastic recycling for consumer?
As consumers, what should we do in order to decrease the work for the recycling factory? Shall we need to seperate the different kind of plastic before we send it to the factory? And anything else?
The Expert answers:
Our recycling doesn’t need to be seperated. They just dump it all into the same truck.
Jenny asks…
When recycling plastic water bottles are we supposed to separate the cap from the bottle?
Someone told me recently that unless the cap is taken off the bottle it won’t get recycled. I highly doubt that. What’s the word on the street?
The Expert answers:
I’d say that the only way to find out for sure what you should do is ask your own recycling centre / council / curbside collection team because it really does depend where they’re going and what they’re used for. The answer given by one council could easily differ from that given by another, because they have signed up with different companies for the final disposal.
My local centre says they want the caps off so that the bottles can be crushed with lower use of energy – but obviously I want to crush the bottles before I take them to the recycling centre (to save storage space and allow me to take more on one trip) so I usually crush them then put the caps back on (otherwise they just pop back out to their original size!).
So I’m afraid they get them with caps on from me.
It is true that the caps use a different plastic (most drink bottles are polyethylene terepthalate, caps are often polypropylene or even harder plastics) and in some circumstances they’d need to be separated – but I suspect that most recycled plastic goes into applications where the mix doesn’t matter much. After all they probably also get different bottles (washing up liquid or shampoo is probably in polyethylene, some things have to be in multi-layered plastics to provide different properties such as an oxygen barrier, acid resistance etc.) as well.
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