In this environmentally conscious world, our customers often ask about our use of recycled plastic. The number one question is if recycled plastic is available and appropriate for their product.
RSP fully supports recycling and goes to great lengths to recycle as many materials as possible, both within our facilities in the US and China. Unfortunately, recycled plastic is not an option for our customer’s plastic products. Let’s look at the details and learn why.
As we know, using recycled plastics is both consumer-friendly and earth-friendly. It involves recovering scrap or waste product and converting it into useful products. Thus, it is common to see recycled plastic in drink jars, lawn furniture, T-shirts, jackets, carpeting, etc. Besides giving the product an earth friendly image, recycled plastic can be lower cost per ton depending on the polymer and market demand.
So, why doesn’t RSP use a lot of recycled plastics? Since recycled material must be sorted by polymer, there is often some contamination. This contamination of materials is appropriate for bottles and lawn furniture but it is not acceptable for the high quality image-conscious products RSP molds. In other words, some flaws in lawn furniture are acceptable but imperfections on a consumer product or medical product used in the hospital are not. Therefore, most of the plastic RSP uses is virgin or raw material, meaning it has never been processed or molded before.
Want to learn more about plastic material choices? Visit our plastic molding page or contact RSP today.