Sign Africa Journal November / December 2018 | Page 30

FEATURE
DEINKING PLASTICS
BY LAUREL BRUNNER, VERDIGRIS PROJECT
Despite all the excitement about cutting out plastic, it’s unrealistic to think that all printed plastics will disappear.
However it’s not unrealistic to start thinking about improved collection and recycling models for them. This is a
massive problem and one that impacts printers in the sign and display and packaging sectors particularly. Unlike
paper and board, few plastics readily biodegrade so their value is low.
Recycling plastic is tricky because there are so many different types, with at
least four used for bottles and bottles often have caps made from a different
plastic which has to be processed separately. There are many applications and
materials such as plastics used in vehicle wrapping and foam board banners
which can be recycled but for which there are relatively few facilities.
This all makes it more complicated to sort and process the plastics for other
purposes. And then there is the cost involved. It should be possible to recycle
pretty much any plastic but the costs of doing so may outweigh the benefits,
particularly from an environmental perspective. The more muddled the plastic
source, the less likely it is that high grade output will be obtained. This is also a
problem with paper recycling, however many deinking mills have moved with
the times and can produce deinked pulp suitable as a raw material for various
paper grades.
Plastic packaging and sign and display materials are the prime candidates for
plastic recycling in the graphics industry. How this material is processed into
new raw materials requires management of a variety of different steps, many of
which are governed by local considerations. Everyone needs to be involved to
some extent, but environmentalists must be realistic and accept that recycling
has to be convenient for consumers. Sorting, collection, handling contaminants,
process complexity, output grade and value of the end product all have to be
taken into account.
It might be that these factors and the diversity of plastic materials is too great
for industrial recycling. It might make more sense to process plastics nonspecifi-
cally and to use them for other purposes. There are bicycle paths in the Nether-
lands made entirely of recycled plastic. It’s still early days but we can trust that
as soon as a viable commercial opportunity is clear that plastics recycling and
reuse will become widespread.
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This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to
raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. Verdigris is supported by:
Agfa Graphics (www.Agfa.com), EFI (www.efi.com), FESPA (www. fespa.com), HP
(www.hp.com), Kodak (www.Kodak.com/go/sustainability), Kornit (www.kornit.
com), Practical Publishing (www.practicalpublishing.co.za), Ricoh (www.ricoh.com),
Spindrift (https://spindrift.click/), Splash PR (www.splashpr.co.uk), Unity Publishing
(http://unity-publishing.co.uk) and Xeikon (www.xeikon.com).
This work by the Verdigris Project is licenced under a Creative Commons
attribution-noderivs 3.0 Unported licence
http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nd/3.0/
South African plastic associations:
Plastics SA: www.plasticsinfo.co.za.
PETCO: www.petco.co.za/PETplan.
Polyco: www.polyco.co.za.
V

Laurel Brunner, Managing
Director Digital Dots Limited,
www.digitaldots.org,
www.verdigrisproject.com
ISSUE 98 NOV/DEC 2018 | www.SignAfrica.com