The recycling process begins with manual or machine sorting, followed by shredding the bottles into little bits.

• An air cyclone eliminates paper and other lightweight materials, while a detergent wash removes any leftover labels and adhesives.

• The PET chips are next dried, and the final impurity, aluminum, is electrostatically removed.

• This process produces PET that is 99.9% free of impurities and sells for around half the price of virgin material.

• Unfortunately, this method cannot separate plastics with similar densities, and plastics made of many polymers cannot be broken down into pure components.

• Recycled mixed plastics, on the other hand, may be molded into plastic lumber that is strong, durable, and graffiti-resistant.

An alternative to this approach that solely use physical means as shown in the picture attached.

Polymers are long-chain compounds formed by chemical processes that connect monomers.

Polymer architecture consists of linear and branched chains, as well as comb, ladder, and star forms.

• The term Plastic refers to any polymer that can be shaped when hot and keeps its form when chilled.

• Thermoplastics are polymers that can be melted and become sufficiently fluid to be molded into shapes that retain their shape when cold.

• When thermosetting polymers, or thermosets, are originally created, they can be molded, but once cooled, they stiffen permanently due to substantial covalent cross-linking between chains.

• Polymer characteristics are governed by the size and form of their chains.

Mn is calculated by counting the number of polymer chains of a specific molecular weight, multiplying each number by the molecular weight of its chain, adding these values, and dividing by the total number of polymer chains.

• Mw is computed by recording the total weight of each chain of a specific length, adding these weights, and dividing by the total weight of the sample.

• A polymer's polydispersity index is defined as the Mw/Mn ratio. If all of the polymers have the same length, the polydispersity index is 1 and the sample is considered monodisperse. Unless they are refined, synthetic polymers are never monodisperse.

• In the solid form, polymers are made up of both ordered crystalline domains (crystallites) and disordered amorphous domains.

The polymer melt transition temperature, Tm, is the temperature at which the crystallites melt.

Only at the conclusion of the process do high-molecular-weight polymers develop.

Tm increases as the degree of crystallinity increases.

• Step-growth or condensation polymers are polymers in which chain growth proceeds in a stepwise way.

• Step-growth polymers are generated by the reactivity of difunctional molecules, with each new link synthesized in a different step.

• During the early phases of polymerization, monomers react with each other until they are depleted.

Nylons are polyamides that may be made from a diacid and a diamine, or from an amino acid, and are used as fibers.

• Polyesters, which are generated from diacids and diols, are used to make textile fibers such as Dacron. Polycarbonates, such as Lexan, are durable, transparent polymers with great tensile strength that are used to make anything from sporting equipment to unbreakable glass.

• Polyurethanes are made up of flexible polymers.

• Chain-growth polymerization is a kind of polymerization in which monomer units are linked without atom loss.

Chain-growth polymerizations, once begun, entail endgroups containing reactive intermediates that react with a new monomer.

• Because chain-growth polymers develop exclusively from the ends and monomers do not react with one other, polymer chain growth happens linearly throughout the polymerization, as opposed to step-growth polymerizations.

• Radicals, carbanions, carbocations, and organometallic complexes are examples of reactive intermediates employed in chain-growth polymerizations.

Alkenes, alkynes, allenes, isocyanates, and cyclic compounds such as lactones, lactams, ethers, and epoxides are examples of monomers utilized in chain-growth polymerization.

• The radical polymerization of ethylene with peroxides as radical initiators can provide low-density polyethylene (LDPE). LDPE is a soft, translucent material that is blown into films using a blow-molding method.

• Metal catalysts, such as the Ziegler-Natta catalysts, can also be used to make high-density polyethylene (HDPE), which is tougher and more opaque than LDPE.

• HDPE is utilized in the manufacture of items like as tableware and water bottles.

• For polyethylene manufacturing, even better metal catalysts, such as zirconium complexes, have been created.

Polymers can have chiral centers, and polymers with identical configurations at all chiral centers are referred to as isotactic, those with alternate configurations are referred to as syndiotactic, and those with fully random configurations are referred to as tactic.

• The higher the stereoregularity of a polymer, the more more strength it has.