After watching the videos on recycling technologies and practices in “Giving Packaging a New Life” by Duales Systems of Germany, I am amazed by the recycling methods and techniques used in current day recycling.
The use of infrared sensors in order to differentiate and automatically separate different types of plastic, astounded me, and included such plastics as PS, PE and PET, as well as the use of chemical solvents and rotary kilns to remove any impurities from PET chips. From sorting by color, to sorting by size, to removing metals from plastics with industrial magnets, a lot of thought has clearly been given to the recycling efforts by institutions that run recycling plants. I think about the effort that went into building these plants and the machinery, but also the effort that went into designing the stages of organized recycling.
The plants shown in these videos didn't just happen, with alot of effort is being put into reusing consumed materials. Technology such as the Opto-Electronic scanners combined with the use of highly accurate compressed air jets to pinpoint pieces of glass, and blow them out, showing the growing importance and advancement of technology in relation to Recycling. Such tools are without a doubt designed with these sole recycling uses in mind, and the fact that they are designed specifically for recycling plants shows to me the dedication that governments and companies have for the cause of sustainability.
Hearing that we can limit the need to mine and drill for natural resources in the earth is promising, as it has been proven in existing plants that recycled products, can in many cases, be completely reused for new products. Processed and reused aluminium, for example, according to the video is no problem for manufacturers; aluminium sheets made via recycled aluminium only uses one twentieth of the energy needed to create new aluminium goods by other means.
Even with all of this technology, however, sorting and reusing materials in plants is still an issue. How much would ordinary people in society know about recycling plants, then? I want to believe that people can change, that information will spread about what technologies are out there to make it happen, but yet, we still see such large amounts of trash around in public areas. It will take a lot of effort and a long time for people to change, and I hope we’re moving in the ecological direction.
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