Recycling is a complex and necessary process. Many people, after sorting plastic waste in garbage bin by street, do not know where they will go to. They can go to waste collection points, treatment plants or oceans. On the other hands, you maybe so surprised when realizing: they are even under your car!
From the needs of auto parts industry to the point of recycling
The automobile industry has developed for a long time and brought many benefits to people’s daily lives. However, it also leads to environmental pollution by carbon emission. In addition, a lot of manufacturers have to import materials, such as steel, iron, aluminum …to produce auto parts. Nevertheless, their price can have a good or bad effect on their product every period. Tax on these imported materials is also a problem manufacturers are concerned. Obviously, they will change production expense and raise the price users have to pay after all.
Hence, they need a solution which can help to reduce expense and still apply for many parts on cars. Of course, the answer is plastic. Producers can use plastic for many parts, such as door handle, control panel, airbag …on a car. The flexibility, durability and lightness of plastics make them ideal for different parts. Besides, they can choose among many types of plastic. Compound is a good choice so that they do not always use only primary plastic. Moreover, recyclable plastic sources are available due to the excessive release of plastic from human into the environment. Recycling plastic is protecting the environment and saving this material.
Recycling plastic bottles in fact for car parts
Ford Motor company is a pioneer in this area. They wanted to promote environmentally friendly auto parts from 2006. Until now – more than 10 years, aerodynamics of road vehicles has required the demand for shields under the cars. In fact, they use plastic bottle for underbody shields on their cars, and wheel liners on F-Series trucks.
Engineers from Ford told that this shield is quite large. In case they use solid plastic, it will be weigh more than 3 times. Hence, when they recycle plastic bottles to apply for manufacturing auto parts, it will reduce the cost of new materials. It helps to improve environment pollution as well.
More specifically, when these bottles are thrown into recycling bins, they are collected with thousands of others and torn into small pieces. These small pieces are often sold to suppliers turning materials into fibers, by melting and extruding them. Next, they mixed yarns with other fibers in the weaving process to create a sheet of material, which is used to make automotive parts.
Because of its light weight, recycled plastic is very helpful for the production of a shield underbody or front and rear wheel arch lining. Moreover, it improves aerodynamics and has a good effect on fuel efficiency.
It even meet all requirements of durability and performance for new cars next year from Ford.
With the typical example of recycling plastic in another industry from Ford above, we can obviously research to apply for others.
From compound or other recyclable plastic types, human is finding more methods to solve environment pollution.