Recycling has become a buzz word over the last few years but what exactly is it and what does it involve? Recycling is when we take a product that has reached the end of its natural life cycle and break it down into components or materials that can be used to make new products. But why do we need to do this can we not just keep on making a whole heap of new materials? Everything needs to be made from something else, it is the building blocks of the materials that we take for granted that are slowly running out.
 

Lets take plastic as an example. Plastic is made from polymers. A polymer is a material constucted from hydocarbons, these are strings of hydrogen and carbon molecules chemically bonded together. Whilst some plastics are made soley from hydrocarbons some plastics have other molecules, such as oxygen and silicon, which alters the properties of the plastic produced. The hydrocarbons used are very often derived from a resin which is the by product of the oil refinery process. As we're sure you are very well aware, the worlds suply of oil is running out. It doesn't take a genius to realise that eventually we will have no more oil left and as such will not be able to make any more plastic.

Now lets think about what we do with the plastics we use, we generally throw them away into a landfill once we think their natural life has ended. The plastic will not degrade in the landfill for thousands of years, if ever, yet it could have been chopped up into pieces and then through a series of scientific processes be turned back into plastic again. There are many different types of plastics and some of them can be recycled and some can't. Why is this? Keep reading and you will find out.
 

So how do you tell which plastic is which? You will notice on many products the small recycling logo with a number inside it. These numbers describe the type of plastic that the product is made from. In the Otago region we can recycle plastics identified by the numbers 1 & 2. Number 1 plastic identifies polyethelene terephthalate, or PET. This is mainly used to make soft drink and water bottles, peanut butter and salad dressing containers. The charecteristics of PET are that it is clear, tough and acts as a very good barrier against gas and moisture. Number 2 plastic identifies high density polyethelene, or HDPE. This forms strong stiff plastics which are very resistant to chemicals and moisture. One of its best applications is for short shelf life products such as milk and cream. Due to its high resistance against chemicals is also a very good choice to contain household cleaning products.

When a plastic is recycled it generally underoges a seris of processes which break the material down to the forming hydrocarbons whic can then be combined with newer hydrocarbons or other molecules to form new materials. It is the equipment needed to undergo these processes which is not always available locally. What this means is that the cost not only in money but also in energy needed to transport the material to be recycled far outwieghs the savings that recycling would make. There doing more damage to the environment than we are actually saving. For a more detailed description of plastics, how they are made, what applications they have and what happens to them once they are recycled take a read of the Plastics New Zealand website.
 

The recyclable materials are collected from your kerbside bins and designated drop off points are taken to a processing plant where they are sorted into the different types, i.e. they are separated into like groups such as milk bottles, number 1 plastics and aluminium cans etc. Once sorted the materials are put into a large hydraulic press and squashed as much as possible creating a bail of material. It takes 36 fadges of milk bottles to create one bail of compressed milk bottles. The bails are stored at the sorting depot until there are enough of them to warrant taking them all to the next step in the processing, the larger processing plant. The processes involved in recycling some materials are often not available within New Zealand, so many of the materials which we put into the recycling process need to be shipped over seas in order to be processed. As you can imagine the cost of this, both in money and energy, can be astronomical and this is one of the reasons why we can't recycle all of the materials that have a recycling logo on them, it simply isn't cost effective or energy efficient. For the lowdown on the whole recycling process visit the UK based website www.recycle-more.co.uk, they have a fantastic section covering the ins and outs of recycling and what happens to the materials once they have been processed. Please remember though that this is based around the UK business and not New Zealand's, there are a few differnces.
 

So what can you do about this? The next time you are in the supermarket about to buy a packaged product have a look for a recycling symbol on it. If it is plastic and a 1 or 2 then great no problems at all, however if it isn't a 1 or 2 is there another product available whose packaging can be recycled? The manufacturers will start to change their views on which products they package in if us the shoppers stop buying products in non recyclable packets. Are any of the products you buy made from recycled materials themselves? Buying these products is a fantastic way of closing the loop, they have been made from materials already recycled therefore they haven't used any new resources. The more recycled products we buy the more and more they will be made and hopefully our important natural reserves will be conserved for longer.