Yes true some what. I have talked to a few plastic recyclers and looked into others. They allow those metal plastics at there facilities. With that in mind I have looked around larger scrap yards and they do not accept plastic as such as this. There for the reason at talking to plastic recyclers. If you have more to this please let me know. I'm not trying to argue with you if that is the way it sounds. I'm just looking for better ways then just sending to city recycling. Do you know of any yards or a way to find a yard that accepts this material? Again Thanks for your input. Also look forward to anyone else's input.

One thing I did forget to mention is I have found one scrap yard that accepts ABS. They are in Winona, MN. They are a bit of a distance for me. But those that may be close and you have not found them. I don't want to use there name do to I think it could be a problem with boarsort, I hope not. But there are some I have just had more luck with finding plastic recyclers to take ABS you just have to have a lot.

Getting rid of plastic is an issue.
Feel free to post any plastic buyers you find.
I’ll make a more detailed response in a few hours as I’ve burnt through the midnight oil long ago and just kept going. ;)
Not arguing either. I’ll be back in some few hours.

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Should almost have another section for just buyers of material that boardsort doesn't buy. That would be awesome to see. Probably wont happen but hey never know I guess. I know with some legwork you can find most buyers for anything but with a community of people doing the same thing. Something like that would be helpful and maybe even help boardsort to get more business in the end. I know I could bring in a lot more if I had better places to get rid of all other material. Just my 2 cents worth.

In short:
Recycling plastics is fairly easy if you put a bit of effort into understanding what you need to do. Then just put it in the recycling bin.
Getting paid for recycling is difficult but possible. Some can be rather direct, others require extensive searching for buyers.
Think outside the box.
Somebody is buying all that stuff somewhere... or it wouldn’t be picked up at your curb at all.

Ohkay. Back again. Let’s start by saying as I have elsewhere; plastics are not a field I have all that much understanding in. Most of it is original research and second party knowledge.
What I’ve found is that the two most common plastics in electronics are PC and ABS. PVC in older equipment and PC-ABS in more recent stuff.
When clean, the slurry and remoulding method works on all the above. That’s quite different from the shred and pellet method used on HDPE, PET, and other household plastics.
This is also different from the method used on plastic bags, sheeting and other thins. Which are dropped into a giant press, heated just below melting, stamped under extreme pressure and then stamp cut into tiny beads.
Metallic plastics are a whole different field; in creation and in recycling.
The only real interest I’ve seen in metalised plastics is in large commercial metal recyclers, only when correctly sorted, and only in huge amounts.

Selling it, or recycling it in general is a large problem in escrap.
And finding a buyer willing to deal with non-industry scales is even more difficult. The good news is this isn’t the 90s or 80s anymore. So from an environmental view the vast majority of recycled plastics do stay out of landfills.
Ultimately most “non” recyclable plastics that are discarded end up in steel production as carbon additives.

So here’s how I got a buyer for most of it. I knew my steel buyer bought vinyls like siding. Every few trips I tried asking if they’d take my other stuff.
Eventually one of the owners put himself on the line for me and made a call to the vinyl buyer and said I knew what I was doing, would they be interested in smaller amounts of post sort plastics. So that’s a route possibility.
Another buyer is a chemical and plastics company I buy my metal testing chemicals from. One day I simply asked. Something along the lines of hey I can bring you in a pile of this stuff well sorted each month if you’d apply the discounts from it to my purchases.
As long as they are manufacturer marked My Aluminium buyer takes all my aluminium plastics and tin plastics as well. Things like anti-static bags and shelf storage food bags, respectively.
Ultimately though; you can put most of it in municipal recycling. Most of the national companies have a zero landfill policy for plastics from the recycling stream. The vast majority gets recycled. Of whatever is left some gets burned as fuel, and some wind up in steel recycling.
Ignore the “rules” in general. The printed rules. They’re outdated and not enforced. Changing the printing or stickers on 500 million bins is too costly to update the collection info but it’s generally ohkay to recycle most plastics via MW.
The only two things to make sure is that any plastic that you put into MW does not have metal attached; and do NOT put EPS, expanded polystyrene (packing peanuts, shipping blocks etc) in a residential bin bin unless the COMPANY, not your village, tells you it’s ohkay. EPS damages equipment. It breaks down into tiny microscopic particles of staticly charged doom.
That said there’s a good chance you can call companies and villages around you and find someone somewhere to take EPS for free. Outside of the plastic industry It’s also used in fuel production. It can me chemically modified into an addition for making kerosene and low grade diesels.
PVC and ABS may be sellable if you have a quarry nearby. They both get used in paving.
PC is used in roofing tar and blacktop sealer.
PP is used in automotive glass, safety glass, and the like.
Paper companies like clean LDPE for making coated printing paper.
PVE/PVEG is used in photography. (People still print out photos right?)

So use your imagination.

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Did Kramer on Seinfield show have the right idea in trying to go interstate and deliver his drink containers to a state that charged deposit? Joking. Several years ago, in the first wave of impending plastic doom, the City of Chattanooga started plastic recycling, using the local handicapped workshop to sort the material and really pushed it hard. What they didn't tell was that most of the sorted and baled material then had to be shipped to South Carolina where a storage facility charged $350 per ton to accept it, as there were practically no recyclers using the material.
Now there is a process where all types of organic waste, including plant/food scraps, wood, plastic, rubber (including tires) animal offal, sewage, etc, can be converted to diesel fuel. The pilot plant near a poultry processing plant in Arkansas could make oil for a cost of 10 bucks a barrel, when the waste was gladly provided for free, and at the time, oil was 40 bucks per barrel. Big problem was, as soon as the poultry processor discovered the offal was usable, they charged for the waste, and suddenly, the cost of making the oil was more than market price.

No, he didn’t. It’s a felony in most of those states. A jailable misdemeanour in others. ;)

Many industrial farmers do just what you are talking about; on site. They refine poo and make diesel. Then use it in their own equipment.

Theoretically plastics can be refined back into oils and small scale proof of concepts exist throughout the states.

Unfortunately we’re ahead of industry here. We’re trying to do the right thing before the technology exists on a large scale.

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A really good discussion. Storage of plastic is a nightmare. Has anyone came up with a "cheap" way to grind down plastics for storage in containers? More options for recycling would be nice instead of continuing to fill land fills with this stuff.

Well for a reputable company on the large scale

But for a more realistic optionThis series will work for thinner plastics And sheet aluminium like cans.
Any of the bulldog and (older) vault series units will shred thin or playable plastics. If there’s any give or bend to them, you can shred them.
I shred optical discs, mostly clean low and midgrade boards, and thin ABS. I also shred cans that I’ve crushed flat.

If you intend to recycle shredded plastics please properly sort by TYPE AND COLOUR!


Then again you could always rig up a shredder of your own. There’s all sorts of videos on YouTube and DailyMotion about doing that.
Oh, and no member of boardsort, forum user, or myself, especially myself, are responsible if you manage to shred yourself!

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The ABS is that the plastic on the outside of tvs and computers that make up the shell?