Question

Two plastics that are targeted for recycling from household waste are PETE (1) ( plastic soft drink bottles/ peanut butter and salad dressing containers) and HDPE (2) ( milk, water, juice containers/ plastic grocery bags). One of the problems of recycling such materials is separating them. Suppose you have been hired to set up a process for separating large quantities (many tons) of waste plastic that is a mixture of PETE and HDPE. Describe how you might perform this separation.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

The HDPE recycling items would usually be clear or lighter in color while the PETE ones would be of color so you could separate it by this color patterns.