Science Memes

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247

explain deez nutz (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

plastic bottles are recyclable

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

PET bottles yes, other plastic bottles not so much, or at least until someone figures out a way to turn plastic trash into a cheap alternative to petroleum.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Not really. Plastic gets damaged when heating it up to melting temps. You won't get a product that has the same properties, unlike with aluminium for instance. You can maybe get away with adding a small percentage of recycled pellets back in, but that's it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Metals are also not 100% recyclable due to contamination. We just have plenty of use for low grade metal alloys.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Which literally means "anything other than aerospace engineering". Aluminium and other metals are infinitely more recyclable than plastics, which as I've said before, degrade immediately to being barely usable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Don't most of the contaminants come out as slag? (IDK I'm not an industrial furnace)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It depends on the contaminant. For example, if iron is polluted with carbon, carbon will dissolve and even react with iron to produce cementite. That's how iron becomes steel.

And slag itself results in a metal loss. You can't drain it off and not waste some of the material you're recovering.

Basically there's no such thing as 100% recovery of recycled material in an industrial setting. You can do it in the lab at astronomical costs, sure, but your local metalworks are not capable of that. But that doesn't mean we should stop recycling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

fair enough