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PostPosted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 9:40 am 

Joined: Sun Oct 27, 2019 6:04 am
Posts: 44
Location: Casper, WY
Hello folks.

Does anyone know of a recycler in the United States that will Buy/Accept E-Waste Unidentified Plastics in shredded form?

I'm starting to shred all the plastics in my teardowns that don't have an identification as to save space. I don't have anyone in my area that will even look at the stuff let alone take it. I'm at least seperating the black plastic from everything else as I've found info stating the difficulty in the sorting process. I am also sorting/shredding what is identified such as >PS-ABS< or anything else with a similar identifier.

Funny how we are told "That's plastic and needs to be recycled" yet no one wants it.

Has Boardsort considered getting into the plastics side as well to help eliminate even more from going into our local landfills?

Thank you in advance everyone.


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PostPosted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 10:40 pm 

Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2016 6:55 pm
Posts: 742
Location: Texas
Funny how we are told "That's plastic and needs to be recycled" yet no one wants it.

Yeah its frustrating, when you can find someone they 10k LBS minimum. I cant imagine trying to store 1k LBS let alone 10k LBS.


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PostPosted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 10:49 pm 
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I’ll be back.

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 12:08 pm 

Joined: Sun Oct 27, 2019 6:04 am
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Location: Casper, WY
rdw1121 wrote:
Yeah its frustrating, when you can find someone they 10k LBS minimum. I cant imagine trying to store 1k LBS let alone 10k LBS.

Quite. I can't even find anyone even willing to look at accepting it even for free in my area.

lostinlodos wrote:
I’ll be back.

We'll we here waiting for you. :)


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 1:28 pm 
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Plastics are a problem

First no two companies use the exact same formulation. So the soda bottle from a Pepsi in Seattle won’t match the chemical formula of Pepsi bottles from Texas, Miami, or Boston.

Second, some types can be reblended, mixed, together without issue despite chemical differences. Others MUST be sorted by differences.

Third, some plastics are very easy to recycle, many are not. Some can’t be recycled at only, only transformed.

Ps-abs is Polystyrene Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene. A less common blend vs PC-ABS.
Clean non-blended ABS has a good post use value. I wouldn’t suggest shredding it.
PC-ABS is sought after blend.
PS-ABS not so much. It exchanges the heat properties of PS for the strength of PC.


As for shredding, finding companies who will accept shred without a prior relationship is going to be difficult. It removes a quality control option for them. So you’ll need to find a very large plastics company. I found I can SELL some plastics and GIVE others to a local quarry that has a materials production company. (Road paving etc) But they’re very specific about sourcing and it’s not a public service. I got in through a large metal recycler who vouched for my sorting ability.

I’ve been able to sell PS and ABS blends on my own fairly easily. And finding buyers for (non shredded) the same things a curb side pick up takes is just as easy in bulk.
The more exotic stuff, if you look hard enough you’ll probably find someone to take it for free. But a few things just require you to pay for. I’ve used Green Disk for a LONG time. With their guaranteed recycling.
And they do custom order and billing work. So if you have a lot of something, or something not on their list....

So here my best suggestions for a local search:
iRecycle app
Find a yard for almost anything

Terracycle
Sell some things. Get rid of some things. Pay to make some things go away.

Green disk.
100% escrap and electronics recycling. Pay to make it go away.

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 3:34 pm 

Joined: Sun Oct 27, 2019 6:04 am
Posts: 44
Location: Casper, WY
WOW!

Thanks Lost!!!

This has been very helpful information. I just hope that more facilities start to accept more of the Unidentified Plastics than we have now.

Time to keep the >PS-ABS< and others that are marked with similar still complete so they can be quickly identified for others to hopefully buy them. I'll still shred all other plastics that don't have an identification Mark as to save space for now.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2019 2:19 am 
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The services do exist. I’ve mentioned in the past a series on recycling by an Australian new service that spanned 4 or 5 episodes. Though it’s on YouTube it’s very hard to track down. I’ve only found it twice. Anywayz...!
I know there’s a few companies in the US experimenting with the rather obscure method found in one of the Australian episodes. They basically, and literally, take a commercial clothing tumble Dryer and mod the hell out of it.
Load it full of mixed hard plastics and melt it into a semi-solid goop then pour it into lumber moulds.

I also know a few large farm owners who are Playing with turning non-rigid plastics into fuel. Diesel.

There’s much issue in the plastic recycling industry at the moment. Like the aforementioned Pepsi bottles.

Say Chris is returning from a conference in Vegas and brings a Pepsi home on his flight. He tosses it in the boardsort recycling bin when he gets to work the next day.
That single bottle could bork the entire recycling process if it winds up with a few hundred tons of Ohio sourced bottles at a small player recycler.
It could be robotically kicked off the belt and disposed of (trash) by sensors and scanners in some large American companies.
Or
It could be segregated and sent to a proper matching source state by one of the large multi-national companies.
If Chris were to have a stop over and recycled that bottle in, Missouri, Wyoming, Kansas, or California... it may get turned into fuel. If he stopped in California it could become playground equipment. If he got on the wrong plane and found himself in Japan it would become part of a car bumper, your new mixed fibre shirt, or a pair of shoes.
If he went to South Africa it could become artificial nesting material for bird recovery. Brazil? Paving. Columbia? Clothing. Madagascar? They’ll charge him 50ę to dispose of it. Since they’ll have to export it to China.
Unlike metal, glass, paper, wood, and everything else; there’s no real system in place for plastics and until there is every one who deals with it is literally just winging it.

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PostPosted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 2:47 am 

Joined: Mon Sep 02, 2019 12:00 am
Posts: 197
I am compelled to put my 50 cents worth into the discussion (that is two cents worth adjusted for inflation)
There is a lot of waste in waste recycling . Chattanooga recently admitted that plastics and broken glass collected in their touted recycling program is trucked to the landfill, after being separated in the sheltered workshop facility. I had learned years ago, when I thought I would get rich by being the first to grab plastic for recycling from free sources, that after the city collected, sorted, then baled the material, they were paying to truck it to a South Carolina facility which charged the city $350 per ton to dump the bales In more recent years I have seen barns and covered pavilions of former Tennessee valley diary farms loaded with plastic bales. A farmer can sleep late and still pay his taxes for many years with those cash cows hibernating on his property.
Along similar lines, someone invented a process for converting raw trash, organics and plastics into diesel fuel at a cost of roughly 10 per "barrel" when crude oil had fluctuated between 40 and 110 dollars per barrel. They had built a pilot plant near a poultry processing plant which gladly gave them their offal. Once the "refinery" was in production, the processor began demanding $40 per ton for what was once free, so the new production cost was about the same as traditional oil sources.


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 3:46 am 

Joined: Sun Oct 27, 2019 6:04 am
Posts: 44
Location: Casper, WY
That would be quite interesting to learn of how to convert plastics to crude so that it could be reclaimed (and get paid for it).


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 4:41 am 
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I see where that is coming from. The difference between municipal and commercial scale is still a stumbling block in the industry.
For instance the glass.
There is ZeRO excuse for landfilling glass. Recycled glass makes up a large minority base material in federal paving. Principally the interstate system. A large city such as mentioned could easily find government contractors to pay for mixed glass.
Glass, like paper and metal, is one I get very enraged about. The only two reasons one or more of the “big 3” doesn’t get recycled is laziness or stupidity. Both are grounds for removal from office.
In its worst conditions
Glass can be melted and flowed into bead moulds for bedding or paving.
Metal is always 100% recyclable. Period.
Paper that is past it’s use for turning back into fibre pulp can still be recycled via composting and turned into pot mulch. Or wet formed into starter bricks—Or as insulation.

If a locality is sending the big three to the landfill or incinerator... I’d call a regional paper or national news company; if you’re positive. They’re literally burying the people’s money in the ground.

Again; hearing such things just makes me so mad. It’s pure incompetence!!!!!!

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