The Case of Plastics 

We’ve collected, separated out what we want, cleaned it up, and put it back in condition to be sold. But it’s not good for anything until someone uses it again—the final step in the recycling process.

Now that we’ve separated the stuff we want from what we don’t, we have to make it into something someone will buy. That’s step 3 in the recycling process—reprocessing.  

Now that we have collected a big pile of stuff, we need to separate what we want from what we don’t want. This is part II of the recycling process and our four-part recycling series—separation.

Recycling is a much-discussed method for disposing of plastics and other materials. But how does recycling work? Chemist and plastic industry executive Bill Carroll breaks the process down in a series of four posts, beginning with Collection.