Plastics Recycling

Recycle, reduce, reuse wheel

While plastics offer light weight, durable, and hygienic solutions for food packaging and other applications, their increased use has also led to a large accumulation of plastics waste in landfills and in the environment. Thermoplastics are very recyclable. Recycling rates for some plastics, however, remain relatively low for a variety of reasons. It is clear that the world needs to get better at recycling. 

The Plastics Recycling Laboratory, which located in Ball Hall, Room 116, is dedicated to education and research related to plastics recycling.  These unique laboratories ensure that both undergraduate and graduate plastics engineering students have all the facilities they need to work in these areas. A number of companies and organizations have supported these labs including the Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc. and the Plastics Division of the American Chemistry Council.

Websites

Plastics Recycling Begins at “Home”

Young woman works in lab with female professor
The Department of Plastics Engineering is preparing students to lead the way starting right in our own laboratories. The plastics processing laboratory courses are a cornerstone of our undergraduate graduate and graduate curricula, but in teaching students about processing we also generate plastics waste. Students and faculty are using the processing labs as an opportunity to practice responsible materials use.
  • For many years, we have reused the polyethylene from the extrusion blow molding experiments, with students grinding the blow molded parts and feeding the flake back to the process.  
  • Annual senior capstone projects are investigating ways to reduce materials waste in the labs. 
    • The students have found that by collecting and regrinding practice parts and keeping materials well sorted, we can reuse the material in the next year’s laboratory courses. 
    • When scrap is no longer useful for our courses, we are shipping it to a third-party recycler in a partnership with Casella Waste Systems. 
Not only are we closing the loop by working to recycle the plastic waste generated by the department, but we are also serving as a “living lab” for continuous improvement of recycling systems. Our graduates all learn about the technological, logistic and social aspects of recycling, and how they can play key roles in the environmentally sustainable future of plastics.

Websites:

Recycling Research

The Department of Plastics Engineering has a significant focus on recycling research. In fact, more than 50 plastics engineering graduate students have done their thesis research in the area of plastics recycling. Over the years, students and faculty of the Department of Plastics Engineering have developed a number of products that are made from waste plastic or rubber. UMass Lowell also is a member of the Reducing Embodied Energy and Decreasing Emissions (REMADE) Institute. 
Current areas of research include
  • Mechanical recycling 
  • Chemical recycling
  • Sustainable (bio-based and biodegradable) materials
Some recent efforts are discussed at Tackling the Challenge.

Equipment for Recycling

recycling equipment
The Cumberland grinder was obtained through the Plastics Industry Association (PIA) and the drum loader was added with a grant from UMass Lowell’s Sustainability Office.
Recycling involves equipment used for compounding and forming polymer systems.  Equipment specific for recycling includes grinders and separation systems.