Plastics recycling

Thermoplastics are recycled products that can be recycled up to 20 times without suffering severe impairment of their properties. Plastic recycling, i.e. the collection, processing and reuse of plastic waste and the manufacture of new plastic products from it, has many advantages. A lower volume of waste, conservation of resources, energy savings - in summary, this form of recycling management results in a significantly reduced environmental impact.

Pigments support recycling processes

Optical sorting of plastic waste is only really successful when it is clearly colored by pigments. Corresponding scanners thus sort lighter colored and darker colored plastics, but come up against their limits, especially with the color black. Black carbon black pigments absorb light waves - so nothing is reflected and subsequently detected. As a result, black plastics often ended up as unsortable waste. But this does not have to be the case. Resourceful companies have now developed a solution. So-called indicator pigments are already metered into the new plastic by Masterbach.

At the end of the life cycle of the plastic part equipped with it, black plastics can also be detected with the associated scanner. Such pigments, such as Bayferrox^® 303 T, are (almost) black to the human eye, but reflect sufficient signals in the NIR range, i.e. in the near infrared range, outside the range visible to humans.

Recycled plastics can be excellently lightened with titanium dioxide, coloured black with carbon blacks or coloured red, yellow, brown with iron oxide pigments, or likewise colored black completely without carbon black.