Industrial plastic grinding stages

Recovering end-of-life plastics and production offcuts requires meticulous preparation. Every year, a large number of plastics are collected from industries, local authorities, plastics manufacturers and businesses, and given a new lease of life. Find out how the industrial plastics recycling chain works.

Why shred your industrial plastic waste?

Plastics are used in many industries, for packaging, containers, transport pallets, etc. In the plastics industry, the industrial process generates production offcuts. All these elements, which can no longer be used, are considered plastic waste.

Because these plastics are unusable, they require considerable storage capacity. A specialized company can intervene directly in warehouses to collect waste in mixed trucks (several types of plastic can be collected at the same time). Properly processed in warehouses, plastic waste can be given a second life!

The advantages: money-saving, time-saving, limited waste storage, everyone can concentrate on their core business.

In addition, it allows companies to participate in the plastic recycling chain, creating new secondary raw materials that can be reused.

The aim of crushing plastic is to simplify the separation of elements of different natures (organic materials, paper, dust, etc.) which cannot be completely separated manually. Subsequently, grinding makes it possible to differentiate plastics of different densities, and therefore to ensure the quality of the final material.

Plastic processing: grinding, micronization, regeneration

Plastic waste is omnipresent in industry, used for a variety of packaging products for example. To reduce their ecological impact, the process of transforming plastic materials into crushed, granular or powder has become a common solution for recycling plastic waste and giving it a new life.

Here are the 3 ways to transform plastic.

Regeneration

Regeneration (or granulation) is an optional step which occurs after the grinding of plastic materials. At high temperature and in liquid form, the material is homogenized and filtered to obtain plastic “granules”, often considered of superior quality for reuse.

Technological advances, public and private initiatives as well as growing consumer awareness have led to an increase in the collection and recycling of plastic packaging in Europe. Discover the different aspects of plastic packaging recycling: the types of plastics used, the recycling process, the advantages and the challenges of tomorrow.

The recycling process

Demetallization

Plastic demetallization is the process of separating metal elements from plastic waste. Without this step, many plastic waste cannot be recycled. This step is done using powerful magnets, eddy currents, etc. depending on the metals to be treated.

Dusting

During the grinding process, the residues of glue, fine particles, dust and other dirt are vacuumed up and can be eliminated, for optimal quality.

Homogenization

As crushed plastic comes from multiple batches of waste with similar but not uniform technical characteristics, it may be necessary to use a homogenization silo (mechanical mixing for several hours) to smooth out the technical characteristics of the bigbags sold.

Washing / separation

During the separation stage, the types of ground material are separated using a flotation system. They are thus sorted according to their density: light materials will float, while heavier ones will sink. Each plastic meets specific density criteria allowing them to be classified according to their nature.

Packaging in Bigbags on pallets

Last step of the transformation? Enable fast, simple recovery of the secondary raw materials generated. Crushed recycled plastics can be packaged in bigbags on pallets for easy transport and storage.