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However there are just a few challenges with this course of that I see loads in recycling strategies. First, reaching a big industrial scale can be tough—as one researcher that Sarah spoke to identified, the solvent used within the course of is dear and difficult to get better after it’s used.
Recycling strategies additionally typically wind up degrading the product indirectly, a tough downside to unravel. It is a main disadvantage to conventional mechanical recycling as properly—typically, recycled plastic isn’t fairly as sturdy or sturdy because the contemporary stuff. Within the case of this research, the issue isn’t really with the plastic, however with the opposite supplies that researchers try to protect.
The start of the textile recycling course of includes shredding the clothes into wonderful items to permit the chemical compounds to seep in and do their work breaking down the plastic. That chops up the cotton fibers too, rendering them too quick to be spun into new yarn. So as a substitute of a brand new T-shirt, the cotton from this course of could be damaged down and used as one thing else, like biofuel.
There’s potential for future enchancment—the researchers tried to vary up their technique to disassemble the materials in a approach that might protect longer cotton fibers, however the reported analysis suggests it doesn’t work properly with the chemical course of thus far.
This story received me interested by a latest characteristic from ProPublica, the place Lisa Music took a take a look at the fact of economic superior recycling in the present day. She centered on pyrolysis, which makes use of warmth to interrupt down plastic into its constructing blocks. As she outlines within the story, whereas the business pitches these new strategies as an answer to our plastics disaster, the fact of the know-how in the present day is much from the perfect we think about.
Most new recycling strategies are nonetheless in improvement, and it’s actually tough to get better helpful supplies at excessive charges in a approach that makes it potential to make use of them once more. Doing all that at a scale massive sufficient to even make a dent in our plastics downside is a large problem.
Simply one thing to remember the following time you see these little arrows.
Associated studying
Learn Sarah’s full story on efforts to recycle combined textiles right here.
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