We've just launched our map. Add yourself by clicking here!
cleaning plastic in remote area's
- This topic has 8 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 4 years ago by
.
Hi,
Very interesting initiative. Am busy with a project to recycle garbage in remote mountain area’s, including plastic bottles. Am thinking how to get rid of the labels on the bottles, sometimes put on with the help of some kind of glue, in an environmental friendly way. Maybe with some hot water and basic detergents, you can remove a lot of the labels and dirt, if not all. I am investigating how to do this in an efficent way – to not have to rub every bottle free of dirt individually, when you have 500 bottles waiting. Also, care should be taken of the wastewater, since there are no wastewater treatment facilities in most of the remote mountain area’s. So I am looking at the possibilities for micro wastewater treatment systems. If you have any ideas or suggestions for efficient cleaning processes in remote area’s and micro wastwater treatment systems, I am interested to know more about it. Will also share my findings on this forum!
Making this removing labels workflow more efficient is on our to-do list! Looking forward hearing suggestions about this as well
Do we need to remove the label adhesive or can we allow this small amount of contamination in our plastics? Also, some labels are notoriously hard to get off. HDPE detergent bottles are a good example. Any suggestion for removing them cleanly?
@daredster On industrial plastic processing facilities, they usually chop the plastic very finely, and then put the shredded plastic in a machine similar to a Washer that waashes the plastic for a while and remove the mayority of the labels residue. This plastic can then be used for inyection moulding but might still contain a few impurities.
Here are a few ideas to remove labels from plastic bottles:
http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Paper-Label-from-a-Plastic-Prescription-Bottle
So I’m guessing not quite pure enough for printer filament? I’ve done a bit with HDPE. Melting, molding into blocks in clamped forms, processing with woodworking tools. Interesting material to work with. It bugs me how much of this resource we just throw away.
I’ve searched all over the archives best as I can and it looks like there’s no answer to daredster’s first question. Is it ok to get a little label adhesive in your plastic shreds? Surely people have gone ahead and done melts without thoroughly removing the adhesives. How did they turn out? I blanch at many of the suggestions here for removing adhesives; using acetone, detergent, heat… If such is necessary I have to question if the efforts are still environmentally sensible.
For the wastewater treatment system, you can consider planted filter:
http://www.eautarcie.org/en/index.html (see the traiselect system video)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
