recycling plastics

I like the idea of recycling plastics. As a matter of fact , there are many other things we should try to recycle, such as glass bottle, paper, water. We are wasting our resources crazily, and we can not do it any longer. Unfortunately, many people fail to realize that .

My partner and I always put plastics into the recycling. Plastic bottles can be chopped up and melted down to make all sorts of other things, and so much better than taking up space in a landfill

The oil reserves are declining on current known fields. There is a strong belief that there are more fields to be found where the oil is more difficult to retrieve and un-economic with the present oil price. A lot of plastics could be processed from coal but again it is cheaper to use oil. Re-cycling of plastics is tricky. You cannot reverse the polymers. You cannot 'melt it down' like ally cans or steel. Many plastics are not compatible with each other and the cost of sorting is more than the re-cycled value. The best you can do is use old plastic as fillers and that does not save much. The public is not prepared to accept a poor quality product simply because it has been re-cycled. They still demand perfection. It has been tried many times in the past and failed.

There are ways to make plastics without using oil. Cereplast designs and manufactures bio-based plastics that can be used as substitutes for petroleum-based plastics. It costs less to produce that petroleum-based plastics. It's a publicly traded company - CERP.OB. I invested in it because I believe in the concept and I'm hopeful people will wake up and demand we start using alternatives to petroleum-based plastics.