Waste plastic recycling classification

Recyclability Waste plastic recycling can be divided into four levels:

Primary recovery refers to the use of common processing methods to process recycled plastic waste (edge ​​trim, etc.) into products that have the same or similar properties as new materials.

Secondary recovery refers to the processing of waste plastics (trimmings, etc.) by one or more processing methods into products that are slightly inferior in performance to new materials.

Tertiary recovery refers to the recovery of chemical components from used plastics to make them monomer or fuel.

Tertiary recycling refers to the recovery of energy from waste plastics through incineration.

The division of primary and secondary recovery processes is often unclear. For example, phenolic plastics are often added to pure compounds for production of the same product with very small changes in properties, but phenolic plastics recycling is still classified as secondary recovery. . The reason for this is that the recyclable waste phenolic plastic only acts as a filler in the mixture with the pure compound, but does not itself have the properties of a pure compound. A similar situation exists for the division of tertiary and tertiary recovery. Some incinerators use a two-step treatment method, ie, thermal decomposition of waste plastics followed by incineration of thermal decomposition products. Although they are used for energy recovery, these wastes are first converted to monomer or chemical raw materials. The two-step treatment method is still divided into three levels of recycling.