Recycling - 'A Different Look', 1990 Polymers, Laminations & Coatings Conference Proceedings

You cannot open a magazine, attend a meeting, or even take part in a conversation with any of the number of groups - ranging from the environmentalists to the packaging manufacturer - without seeing, hearing, receiving, easy and simple solutions to the problem of recycling.

The packaging manufacturer is developing a paranoia and a persecution complex, while the environmentalist and many legislative bodies are in a near-religious fervor to pursue the matter.

Recycling is not exactly new. In 1978, Goodyear ground up two-liter PET beverage bottles, processed the resin into yarn and made a suit and tie it to demonstrate the reprocessability of the PET resin. Both suit and tie are in the Ripley’s museum in Wisconsin. If there is an easy and simple answered talk about into practice, one might ask? Every group has its own answer. The environmentalists are blaming the manufacturers; the packagers are claiming innocence and fighting to get more time to study the problem.

The solution to the problem, of course, is neither easy, nor is it simple. We are going to try in this paper to look it this problem in a somewhat different light, hopefully seeing both sides of the coin at the same time.