1

Chapter 1
Introduction

Background and Significance

In 21th century learning, English is very important

which we should be able to communicate English
fluently and apply the skill with our daily life by using
English to present the information about useful things
from recyclable waste such as plastic bottle broom that
helps to reduce waste and pollution. Moreover, it helps
to save the world and our lives.
So, we agree to do our English Project Work on topic of
How to make plastic bottle broom because we would
like to study the information and vocabularies about
making plastic bottle broom, present the information in
English, and also have project work skills.

Objectives
1. To study the information and vocabularies about
making plastic bottle broom.
2. To present the information in English.
3. To have project work skills.

Scope of Study
1. Target Group: The students in Mathayomsuksa 5/1
2. Duration: Semester 2/2024
3. Place: Tessaban 2 Maetamdharunnawed School
285, Phahonyothin Road, Maetam Sub-Distric, Muang
District, Phayao.
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Chapter 2
Related Literature

In doing English Project Work in topic of How to make

plastic bottle broom. We learn about;
1. Plastic
2. Bottle
3. Broom
4. Recycle

Recycle
Recycling is the process of
converting waste materials into new materials and
objects. This concept often includes the recovery of
energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a
material depends on its ability to reacquire the
properties it had in its original state. It is an alternative
to"conventional" waste disposal that can save material
and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also
prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and
reduce the consumption offreshrawmaterials, reducing
energy use, air pollution (from incineration) and water
pollution (from landfilling).
Recycling is a key component of modern waste
reduction and is the third component
ofthe"Reduce, Reuse,andRecycle" wastehierarchy. Itpr
omotes environmental sustainability by removing raw
material input and redirecting waste output in the
economic system. There are some ISO
standards related to recycling, such as ISO 15270:2008
for plastics waste and ISO 14001:2015 for
 3

environmental management control of recycling

practice.
Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass,
paper, cardboard, metal, plastic, tires, textiles,
batteries, and electronics. The composting and other
reuse of biodegradable waste—such
as food and garden waste—is also a form of
recycling. Materials for recycling are either delivered to
a household recycling center or picked up from
curbside bins, then sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed
into new materials for manufacturing new products.
In ideal implementations, recycling a material
produces a fresh supply of the same material—for
example, used office paper would be converted into
new office paper, and used polystyrene foam into new
polystyrene. Some types of materials, such as metal
cans, can be remanufactured repeatedly without losing
their purity. With other materials, this is often difficult
or too expensive (compared with producing the same
product from raw materials or other sources), so
"recycling" of many products and materials involves
their reuse in producing different materials (for
example, paperboard). Another form of recycling is
the salvage of constituent materials from complex
products, due to either their intrinsic value (such
as lead from car batteries and gold from printed circuit
boards), or their hazardous nature (e.g. removal and
reuse of mercury from thermometers and thermostats).
History
Reusing materials has been a common practice for
most of human history with recorded advocates as far
back as Plato in the fourth century BC. During periods
when resources were scarce, archaeological studies of
ancient waste dumps show less household waste (such
as ash, broken tools, and pottery), implying that more
 4

waste was recycled in place of new

material. However, archaeological artefacts made from
recyclable material, such as glass or metal, may
neither be the original object nor resemble it, with the
consequence that a successful ancient recycling
economy can become invisible when recycling is
synonymous with re-melting rather than reuse.
Inside a British factory, a
textile worker rakes newly-made
'shoddy' which was then
combined with new wool to make
new cloth
In pre-industrial times, there is
evidence of scrap bronze and
other metals being collected in
Europe and melted down for
continuous reuse. Paper
recycling was first recorded in 1031 when Japanese
shops sold repulped paper. In Britain dust and ash from
wood and coal fires was collected by "dustmen"
and downcycled as a base material for brick making.
These forms of recycling were driven by the economic
advantage of obtaining recycled materials instead of
virgin material, and the need for waste removal in
ever-more-densely populated areas. In 1813, Benjamin
Law developed the process of turning
Industrialization spurred demand for affordable
materials.
In addition to rags, ferrous scrap metals were
coveted as they were cheaper to acquire than virgin
ore. Railroads purchased and sold scrap metal in the
19th century, and the growing steel and automobile
industries purchased scrap in the early 20th century.
Many secondary goods were collected, processed and
sold by peddlers who scoured dumps and city streets
 5

for discarded machinery, pots, pans, and other sources

of metal. By World War I, thousands of such peddlers
roamed the streets of American cities, taking
advantage of market forces to recycle post-consumer
materials into industrial production.
Manufacturers of beverage bottles,
including Schweppes, began offering refundable
recycling deposits in Great Britain and Ireland around
1800. An official recycling system with refundable
deposits for bottles was established in Sweden in 1884,
and for aluminum beverage cans in 1982; it led to
recycling rates of 84–99%, depending on type (glass
bottles can be refilled around 20 times).
New chemical industries created in the late 19th
century both invented new materials (e.g. Bakelite in
1907) and promised to transform valueless into
valuable materials. Proverbially, you could not make a
silk purse of a sow's ear—until the US firm Arthur D.
Little published in 1921 "On the Making of Silk Purses
from Sows' Ears", its research proving that when
"chemistry puts on overalls and gets down to business
[...] new values appear. New and better paths are
opened to reach the goals desired."
Recycling—or "salvage", as it was then usually
known—was a major issue for governments
during World War II, where financial constraints and
significant material shortages made it necessary to
reuse goods and recycle materials. These resource
shortages caused by the world wars, and other such
world-changing events, greatly encouraged recycling. It
became necessary for most homes to recycle their
waste, allowing people to make the most of what was
available. Recycling household materials also meant
more resources were left available for war
efforts. Massive government campaigns, such as
 6

the National Salvage Campaign in Britain and

the Salvage for Victory campaign in the United States,
occurred in every fighting nation, urging citizens to
donate metal, paper, rags, and rubber as a patriotic
duty.

Post-World War II
A considerable investment in recycling occurred in
the 1970s due to rising energy costs. Recycling
aluminium uses only 5% of the energy of virgin
production. Glass, paper and other metals have less
dramatic but significant energy savings when recycled.
Although consumer electronics have been popular
since the 1920s, recycling them was almost unheard of
until early 1991. The first electronic waste
recycling scheme was implemented in Switzerland,
beginning with collection of old refrigerators, then
expanding to cover all devices. When these programs
were created, many countries could not deal with the
sheer quantity of e-waste, or its hazardous nature, and
began to export the problem to developing countries
without enforced environmental legislation. (For
example, recycling computer monitors in the United
States costs 10 times more than in China.) Demand for
electronic waste in Asia began to grow when
scrapyards found they could extract valuable
substances such as copper, silver, iron, silicon, nickel,
and gold during the recycling process. The 2000s saw a
boom in both the sales of electronic devices and their
growth as a waste stream: In 2002, e-waste grew faster
than any other type of waste in the EU. This spurred
investment in modern automated facilities to cope with
the influx, especially after strict laws were
implemented in 2003.
 7

As of 2014, the European Union had about 50% of

world share of waste and recycling industries, with over
60,000 companies employing 500,000 people and a
turnover of €24 billion. EU countries are mandated to
reach recycling rates of at least 50%; leading countries
are already at around 65%. The overall EU average was
39% in 2013 and is rising steadily, to 45% in 2015.
In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly set
17 Sustainable Development Goals. Goal
12, Responsible Consumption and Production, specifies
11 targets "to ensure sustainable consumption and
production patterns". The fifth target, Target 12.5, is
defined as substantially reducing waste generation by
2030, indicated by the National Recycling Rate.
In 2018, changes in the recycling industry have
sparked a global "crisis". On 31 December 2017, China
announced its "National Sword" policy, setting new
standards for imports of recyclable material and
banning materials deemed too "dirty" or "hazardous".
The new policy caused drastic disruptions in the global
recycling market, and reduced the prices of scrap
plastic and low-grade paper. Exports of recyclable
materials from G7 countries to China dropped
dramatically, with many shifting to countries in
southeast Asia. This generated significant concern
about the recycling industry's practices
and environmental sustainability. The abrupt shift
caused countries to accept more materials than they
could process, and raised fundamental questions about
shipping waste from developed countries to countries
with few environmental regulations—a practice that
predated the crisis.
Health and environmental impact
According to the WHO (2023), “Every year millions
of electrical and electronic devices are discarded ... a
 8

threat to the environment and to human health if they

are not treated, disposed of, and recycled
appropriately. Common items ... include
computers ... e-waste are recycled using
environmentally unsound techniques and are likely
stored in homes and warehouses, dumped, exported or
recycled under inferior conditions. When e-waste is
treated using inferior activities, it can release as many
as 1000 different chemical substances ... including
harmful neurotoxicants such as lead.” A paper in the
journal Sustainable Materials & Technologies remarks
upon the difficulty of managing e-waste, particularly
from home automation products, which, due to their
becoming obsolete at a high rate, are putting
increasing strain on recycling systems, which have not
adapted to meet the recycling needs posed by this
type of product.
Slag recycling
Copper slag is obtained when copper and nickel
ores are recovered from their source ores using a
pyrometallurgical process, and these ores usually
contain other elements which include iron, cobalt,
silica, and alumina. An estimate of 2.2–3 tons of copper
slag is generated per ton of copper produced, resulting
in around 24.6 tons of slag per year, which is regarded
as waste.
Environmental impact of slag include
copper paralysis, which leads to death due to gastric
hemorrhage, if ingested by humans. It may also cause
acute dermatitis upon skin exposure. Toxicity may also
be uptaken by crops through soil, consequently
spreading animals and food sources and increasing the
risk of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, cognitive
impairment, chronic anemia, and damage to kidneys,
bones, nervous system, brain and skin.
 9

Substituting gravel and grit in quarries has been more

cost-effective, due to having its sources with better
proximity to consumer markets. Trading between
countries and establishment of blast furnaces is
helping increase slag utilization, hence reducing
wastage and pollution.
Environmental impact
Economist Steven Landsburg, author of a paper
entitled "Why I Am Not an Environmentalist", claimed
that paper recycling actually reduces tree populations.
He argues that because paper companies have
incentives to replenish their forests, large demands for
paper lead to large forests while reduced demand for
paper leads to fewer "farmed" forests.

A metal scrap worker is pictured

burning insulated copper wires for copper recovery
at Agbogbloshie, Ghana.
When foresting companies cut down trees, more are
planted in their place; however, such farmed forests
are inferior to natural forests in several ways. Farmed
forests are not able to fix the soil as quickly as natural
forests. This can cause widespread soil erosion and
often requiring large amounts of fertilizer to maintain
the soil, while containing little tree and wild-
life biodiversity compared to virgin forests. Also, the
new trees planted are not as big as the trees that were
cut down, and the argument that there would be "more
trees" is not compelling to forestry advocates when
they are counting saplings.
 10

In particular, wood from tropical rainforests is rarely

harvested for paper because of their
heterogeneity. According to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat,
the overwhelming direct cause of deforestation
is subsistence farming (48% of deforestation)
and commercial agriculture (32%), which is linked to
food, not paper production.
Other non-conventional methods of material recycling,
like Waste-to-Energy (WTE) systems, have garnered
increased attention in the recent past due to the
polarizing nature of their emissions. While viewed as a
sustainable method of capturing energy from material
waste feedstocks by many, others have cited
numerous explanations for why the technology has not
been scaled globally.

Legislation
For a recycling program to work, a large,
stable supply of recyclable material is crucial. Three
legislative options have been used to create such
supplies: mandatory recycling collection, container
deposit legislation, and refuse bans. Mandatory
collection laws set recycling targets for cities, usually in
the form that a certain percentage of a material must
be diverted from the city's waste stream by a target
date. The city is responsible for working to meet this
target.
Container deposit legislation mandates refunds for
the return of certain containers—typically glass, plastic
and metal. When a product in such a container is
purchased, a small surcharge is added that the
consumer can reclaim when the container is returned
to a collection point. These programs have succeeded
 11

in creating an average 80% recycling rate. Despite

such good results, the shift in collection costs from
local government to industry and consumers has
created strong opposition in some areas—for example,
where manufacturers bear the responsibility for
recycling their products. In the European Union,
the WEEE Directive requires producers of consumer
electronics to reimburse the recyclers' costs.
An alternative way to increase the supply of
recyclates is to ban the disposal of certain materials as
waste, often including used oil, old batteries, tires, and
garden waste. This can create a viable economy for the
proper disposal of the products. Care must be taken
that enough recycling services exist to meet the
supply, or such bans can create increased illegal
dumping.
Government-mandated demand
Four forms of legislation have also been used to
increase and maintain the demand
forrecycledmaterials:minimumrecycledcontentmandate
s,utilizationrates, procurement policies, and
recycled product labeling.
Both minimum recycled content mandates and
utilization rates increase demand by forcing
manufacturers to include recycling in their operations.
Content mandates specify that a certain percentage of
a new product must consist of recycled material.
Utilization rates are a more flexible option: Industries
can meet their recycling targets at any point of their
operations, or even contract out recycling in exchange
for tradable credits. Opponents to these methods cite
their large increase in reporting requirements, and
claim that they rob the industry of flexibility.
Governments have used their own purchasing
power to increase recycling demand through
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"procurement policies". These policies are either "set-

asides", which reserve a certain amount of spending
for recycled products; or "price preference" programs
that provide larger budgets when recycled items are
purchased. Additional regulations can target specific
cases: in the United States, for example,
the Environmental Protection Agency mandates the
purchase of oil, paper, tires and building
insulation from recycled or re-refined sources
whenever possible.
The final government regulation toward increased
demand is recycled product labeling. When producers
are required to label their packaging with the amount
of recycled material it contains (including the
packaging), consumers can make more educated
choices. Consumers with sufficient buying power can
choose more environmentally conscious options,
prompting producers to increase the recycled material
in their products and increase demand. Standardized
recycling labeling can also have a positive effect on the
supply of recyclates when it specifies how and where
the product can be recycled.
Recyclates
Glass recovered by crushing only
one kind of beer bottle
"Recyclate" is a raw material sent
to and processed in a waste
recycling plant or materials-
recovery facility so it can be used
in the production of new materials and products. For
example, plastic bottles can be made into plastic
pellets and synthetic fabrics.
Quality of recyclate
The quality of recyclates is one of the principal
challenges for the success of a long-term vision of
 13

a green economy and achieving zero waste. It

generally refers to how much of it is composed of
target material, versus non-target material and other
non-recyclable material. Steel and other metals have
intrinsically higher recyclate quality; it is estimated
that two-thirds of all new steel comes from recycled
steel. Only target material is likely to be recycled, so
higher amounts of non-target and non-recyclable
materials can reduce the quantity of recycled
products. A high proportion of non-target and non-
recyclable material can make it more difficult to
achieve "high-quality" recycling; and if recyclate is of
poor quality, it is more likely to end up being down-
cycled or, in more extreme cases, sent to other
recovery options or landfilled. For example, to facilitate
the remanufacturing of clear glass products, there are
tight restrictions for colored glass entering the re-melt
process. Another example is the downcycling of plastic,
where products such as plastic food packaging are
often downcycled into lower quality products, and do
not get recycled into the same plastic food packaging.
The quality of recyclate not only supports high-
quality recycling, but it can also deliver significant
environmental benefits by reducing, reusing, and
keeping products out of landfills. High-quality recycling
can support economic growth by maximizing the value
of waste material. Higher income levels from the sale
of quality recyclates can return value significant to
local governments, households and
businesses. Pursuing high-quality recycling can also
promote consumer and business confidence in the
waste and resource management sector, and may
encourage investment in it.
There are many actions along the recycling supply
chain, each of which can affect recyclate quality. Waste
 14

producers who place non-target and non-recyclable

wastes in recycling collections can affect the quality of
final recyclate streams, and require extra efforts to
discard those materials at later stages in the recycling
process. Different collection systems can induce
different levels of contamination. When multiple
materials are collected together, extra effort is
required to sort them into separate streams and can
significantly reduce the quality of the final
products. Transportation and the compaction of
materials can also make this more difficult. Despite
improvements in technology and quality of recyclate,
sorting facilities are still not 100% effective in
separating materials. When materials are stored
outside, where they can become wet, can also cause
problems for re-processors. Further sorting steps may
be required to satisfactorily reduce the amount of non-
target and non-recyclable material.

Recycling consumer waste

A three-sided bin at a railway station
in Germany, intended to separate
paper (left) and plastic
wrappings (right) from other
waste (back)
A number of systems have been
implemented to collect recyclates
from the general waste stream,
occupying different places on the
spectrum of trade-off between public
convenience and government ease
 15

and expense. The three main categories of collection

are drop-off centers, buy-back centers and curbside
collection. About two-thirds of the cost of recycling is
incurred in the collection phase.
Curbside collection
A recycling truck collecting the
contents of a recycling
bin in Canberra, AustraliaEmptyin
g of segregated rubbish
containers in Tomaszów
Mazowiecki, Poland
Curbside collection encompasses
many subtly different systems, which differ mostly on
where in the process the recyclates are sorted and
cleaned. The main categories are mixed waste
collection, commingled recyclables, and source
separation. A waste collection vehicle generally picks
up the waste.
In mixed waste collection, recyclates are collected
mixed with the rest of the waste, and the desired
materials are sorted out and cleaned at a central
sorting facility. This results in a large amount of
recyclable waste (especially paper) being too soiled to
reprocess, but has advantages as well: The city need
not pay for the separate collection of recyclates, no
public education is needed, and any changes to the
recyclability of certain materials are implemented
where sorting occurs.
In a commingled or single-stream
system, recyclables are mixed but kept separate from
non-recyclable waste. This greatly reduces the need for
post-collection cleaning, but requires public
education on what materials are recyclable.

Source separation
 16

Source separation is the other extreme, where

each material is cleaned and sorted prior to collection.
It requires the least post-collection sorting and
produces the purest recyclates. However, it incurs
additional operating costs for collecting each material,
and requires extensive public education to avoid
recyclate contamination. In Oregon, USA, Oregon
DEQ surveyed multi-family property managers; about
half of them reported problems, including
contamination of recyclables due to trespassers such
as transients gaining access to collection areas.
Source separation used to be the preferred
method due to the high cost of sorting commingled
(mixed waste) collection. However, advances in sorting
technology have substantially lowered this overhead,
and many areas that had developed source separation
programs have switched to what is called co-mingled
collection.
Buy-back centers
Reverse vending machine in
Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland
At buy-back centers, separated,
cleaned recyclates are purchased,
providing a clear incentive for use and
creating a stable supply. The post-
processed material can then be sold. If
profitable, this conserves the emission
of greenhouse gases; if unprofitable, it
increases their emission. Buy-back
centres generally need government
subsidies to be viable. According to a 1993 report by
the U.S. National Waste & Recycling Association, it
costs an average $50 to process a ton of material that
can be resold for $30.
Drop-off centers
 17

A drop-off center in the United

Kingdom, where they are
generally named Recycling
Centres
Drop-off centers require the
waste producer to carry
recyclates to a central location—
either an installed or mobile collection station or the
reprocessing plant itself. They are the easiest type of
collection to establish but suffer from low and
unpredictable throughput.
Distributed recycling
Forsomewastematerialssuchasplastic,recenttechni
caldevicescalled recyclebots enable a form of
distributed recycling called DRAM (distributed recycling
additive manufacturing). Preliminary life-cycle
analysis (LCA) indicates that such distributed recycling
of HDPE to make filament for 3D printers in rural
regions consumes less energy than using virgin resin,
or using conventional recycling processes with their
associated transportation.
Another form of distributed recycling mixes waste
plastic with sand to make bricks in Africa. Several
studies have looked at the properties of recycled waste
plastic and sand bricks. The composite pavers can be
sold at 100% profit while employing workers at 1.5×
the minimum wage in the West African region, where
distributed recycling has the potential to produce 19
million pavement tiles from 28,000 tons of plastic
water sachets annually in Ghana, Nigeria,
and Liberia. This has also been done with COVID19
masks.
Sorting
Once commingled recyclates are collected and
delivered to a materials recovery facility, the materials
 18

must be sorted. This is done in a series of stages, many

of which involve automated processes, enabling a
truckload of material to be fully sorted in less than an
hour. Some plants can now sort materials
automatically; this is known as single-stream recycling.
Automatic sorting may be aided by robotics and
machine learning. In plants, a variety of materials is
sorted including paper, different types of plastics,
glass, metals, food scraps, and most types
of batteries. A 30% increase in recycling rates has been
seen in areas with these plants. In the US, there are
over 300 materials recovery facilities.
Initially, commingled recyclates are removed from the
collection vehicle and placed on a conveyor belt spread
out in a single layer. Large pieces of corrugated
fiberboard and plastic bags are removed by hand at
this stage, as they can cause
later machinery to jam.
Early sorting of recyclable
materials: glass and plastic
bottles in Poland.
Next, automated machinery
such as disk screens and air
classifiers separate the recyclates by weight, splitting
lighter paper and plastic from heavier glass and metal.
Cardboard is removed from mixed paper, and the most
common types of plastic—PET (#1) and HDPE (#2)—
are collected, so these materials can be diverted into
the proper collection channels. This is usually done by
hand; but in some sorting
centers, spectroscopic scanners are used to
differentiate between types of paper and plastic based
on their absorbed wavelengths. Plastics tend to be
incompatible with each other due to differences
 19

in chemical composition; their polymer molecules repel

each other, similar to oil and water.
Strong magnets are used to separate out ferrous
metals such as iron, steel and tin cans. Non-ferrous
metals are ejected by magnetic eddy currents: A
rotating magnetic field induces an electric current
around aluminum cans, creating an eddy current inside
the cans that is repulsed by a large magnetic field,
ejecting the cans from the stream.
A recycling point in New Byth,
Scotland, with separate
containers for paper, plastics, and
differently colored glass
Finally, glass is sorted according
to its color: brown, amber, green,
or clear. It may be sorted either by hand, or by a
machine that uses colored filters to detect colors. Glass
fragments smaller than 10 millimetres (0.39 in) cannot
be sorted automatically, and are mixed together as
"glass fines".
In 2003, San Francisco's Department of the
Environment set a citywide goal of zero waste by
2020. San Francisco's refuse hauler, Recology,
operates an effective recyclables sorting facility that
has helped the city reach a record-breaking landfill
diversion rate of 80% as of 2021. Other American
cities, including Los Angeles, have achieved similar
rates.
Recycling industrial waste
Mounds of shredded rubber
tires ready for processing
Although many government
programs concentrate on
recycling at home, 64% of waste
in the United Kingdom is
 20

generated by industry. The focus of many recycling

programs in industry is their cost-effectiveness. The
ubiquitous nature of cardboard packaging makes
cardboard a common waste product recycled by
companies that deal heavily in packaged goods, such
as retail stores, warehouses, and goods distributors.
Other industries deal in niche and specialized products,
depending on the waste materials they handle.
Glass, lumber, wood pulp and paper manufacturers
all deal directly in commonly recycled materials;
however, independent tire dealers may collect and
recycle rubber tires for a profit.
The waste produced from burning coal in a Coal-
fired power station is often called fuel ash or fly ash in
the United States. It is a very useful material and used
in concrete construction. It exhibits Pozzolanic activity.
Levels of metals recycling are generally low. In
2010, the International Resource Panel, hosted by
the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
published reports on metal stocks and their recycling
rates. It reported that the increase in the use of metals
during the 20th and into the 21st century has led to a
substantial shift in metal stocks from below-ground to
use in above-ground applications within society. For
example, in the US, in-use copper grew from 73 to
238 kg per capita between 1932–1999.
The report's authors observed that, as metals are
inherently recyclable, metal stocks in society can serve
as huge above-ground mines (the term "urban mining"
has thus been coined). However, they found that the
recycling rates of many metals are low. They warned
that the recycling rates of some rare metals used in
applications such as mobile phones, battery packs for
hybrid cars and fuel cells, are so low that unless future
end-of-life recycling rates are dramatically increased,
 21

these critical metals will become unavailable for use in

modern technology.
The military recycles some metals. The U.S. Navy's
Ship Disposal Program uses ship breaking to reclaim
the steel of old vessels. Ships may also be sunk to
create artificial reefs. Uranium is a dense metal that
has qualities superior to lead and titanium for many
military and industrial uses. Uranium left over from
processing it into nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear
reactors is called depleted uranium, and is used by all
branches of the U.S. military for the development of
such things as armor-piercing shells and shielding.
The construction industry may recycle concrete
and old road surface pavement, selling these materials
for profit.
Some rapidly growing industries, particularly
the renewable energy and solar photovoltaic
technology industries, are proactively creating
recycling policies even before their waste streams have
considerable volume, anticipating future demand.
Recycling of plastics is more difficult, as most programs
are not able to reach the necessary level of quality.
Recycling of PVC often results in downcycling of the
material, which means only products of lower quality
standard can be made with the recycled material.
Further information: Computer recycling
Further information: Battery recycling
Further information: Solar panel § Recycling
Further information: Wind turbine § Demolition and
recycling
Computer processors retrieved
from waste stream
E-waste is a growing problem,
accounting for 20–50 million
metric tons of global waste per
 22

year according to the EPA. It is also the fastest growing

waste stream in the EU. Many recyclers do not recycle
e-waste responsibly. After the cargo barge Khian
Sea dumped 14,000 metric tons of toxic ash in Haiti,
the Basel Convention was formed to stem the flow of
hazardous substances into poorer countries. They
created the e-Stewards certification to ensure that
recyclers are held to the highest standards for
environmental responsibility and to help consumers
identify responsible recyclers. It operates alongside
other prominent legislation, such as the Waste
Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive of the EU
and the United States National Computer Recycling
Act, to prevent poisonous chemicals from entering
waterways and the atmosphere.
In the recycling process, television sets, monitors,
cell phones, and computers are typically tested for
reuse and repaired. If broken, they may be
disassembled for parts still having high value if labor is
cheap enough. Other e-waste is shredded to pieces
roughly 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in size and manually
checked to separate toxic batteries and capacitors,
which contain poisonous metals. The remaining pieces
are further shredded to 10 millimetres (0.39 in)
particles and passed under a magnet to remove ferrous
metals. An eddy current ejects non-ferrous metals,
which are sorted by density either by a centrifuge or
vibrating plates. Precious metals can be dissolved in
acid, sorted, and smelted into ingots. The remaining
glass and plastic fractions are separated by density
and sold to re-processors. Television sets and monitors
must be manually disassembled to remove lead
from CRTs and the mercury backlight from LCDs.
Vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines can also
be recycled. They often contain rare-earth
 23

elements (REE) and/or other critical raw materials.

For electric car production, large amounts of REE's are
typically required.
Whereas many critical raw elements and REE's can
be recovered, environmental engineer Phillipe
Bihouix Archived 6 September 2021 at the Wayback
Machine reports that recycling
of indium, gallium, germanium, selenium,
and tantalum is still very difficult and their recycling
rates are very low.
Plastic recycling
A container for recycling used plastic
spoons into material for 3D printing
Plastic recycling is the process of
recovering scrap or waste plastic and
reprocessing the material into useful
products, sometimes completely
different in form from their original
state. For instance, this could mean
melting down soft drink bottles and
then casting them as plastic chairs
and tables. For some types of plastic, the same piece
of plastic can only be recycled about 2–3 times before
its quality decreases to the point where it can no
longer be used.
Physical recycling
Some plastics are remelted to form new plastic
objects; for example, PET water bottles can be
converted into polyester destined for clothing. A
disadvantage of this type of recycling is that the
molecular weight of the polymer can change further
and the levels of unwanted substances in the plastic
can increase with each remelt.
A commercial-built recycling facility was sent to
the International Space Station in late 2019. The facility
 24

takes in plastic waste and unneeded plastic parts and

physically converts them into spools of feedstock for
the space station additive manufacturing facility used
for in-space 3D printing.

Chemical recycling
For some polymers, it is possible to convert them
back into monomers, for example, PET can be treated
with an alcohol and a catalyst to form a dialkyl
terephthalate. The terephthalate diester can be used
with ethylene glycol to form a new polyester polymer,
thus making it possible to use the pure polymer again.
In 2019, Eastman Chemical Company announced
initiatives of methanolysis and syngas designed to
handle a greater variety of used material.
Waste plastic pyrolysis to fuel oil
Another process involves the conversion of assorted
polymers into petroleum by a much less precise
thermal depolymerization process. Such a process
would be able to accept almost any polymer or mix of
polymers, including thermoset materials such as
vulcanized rubber tires and the biopolymers in feathers
and other agricultural waste. Like natural petroleum,
the chemicals produced can be used as fuels or as
feedstock. A RESEM Technology plant of this type
in Carthage, Missouri, US, uses turkey waste as input
material. Gasification is a similar process but is not
technically recycling since polymers are not likely to
become the result. Plastic Pyrolysis can convert
petroleum based waste streams such as plastics into
quality fuels, carbons. Given below is the list of suitable
plastic raw materials for pyrolysis:
 Mixed plastic
(HDPE, LDPE, PE, PP, Nylon, Teflon, PS, ABS, FRP, P
ET etc.)
 25

 Mixed waste plastic from waste paper mill

 Multi-layered plastic
Recycling codes
Recycling codes on products
In order to meet recyclers' needs
while providing manufacturers a
consistent, uniform system,
a coding system was developed.
The recycling code for plastics
was introduced in 1988 by the
plastics industry through the Society of the Plastics
Industry. Because municipal recycling programs
traditionally have targeted packaging—primarily
bottles and containers—the resin coding
system offered a means of identifying the resin content
of bottles and containers commonly found in the
residential waste stream.
In the United States, plastic products are printed with
numbers 1–7 depending on the type of resin. Type 1
(polyethylene terephthalate) is commonly found in soft
drink and water bottles. Type 2 (high-density
polyethylene) is found in most hard plastics such
as milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles, and some
dishware. Type 3 (polyvinyl chloride) includes items
such as shampoo bottles, shower curtains, hula
hoops, credit cards, wire jacketing, medical equipment,
siding, and piping. Type 4 (low-density polyethylene) is
found in shopping bags, squeezable bottles, tote bags,
clothing, furniture, and carpet. Type 5
is polypropylene and makes up syrup bottles,
straws, Tupperware, and some automotive parts. Type
6 is polystyrene and makes up meat trays, egg cartons,
clamshell containers, and compact disc cases. Type 7
includes all other plastics such as bulletproof materials,
3- and 5-gallon water bottles, cell phone and tablet
 26

frames, safety goggles and sunglasses. Having a

recycling code or the chasing arrows logo on a material
is not an automatic indicator that a material is
recyclable but rather an explanation of what the
material is. Types 1 and 2 are the most commonly
recycled.
Cost–benefit analysis
In addition to environmental impact, there is
debate over whether recycling is economically efficient.
According to a Natural Resources Defense
Council study, waste collection and landfill disposal
creates less than one job per 1,000 tons of waste
material managed; in contrast, the collection,
processing, and manufacturing of recycled materials
creates 6–13 or more jobs per 1,000 tons. According to
the U.S. Recycling Economic Informational Study, there
are over 50,000 recycling establishments that have
created over a million jobs in the US. The National
Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) reported in May
2015 that recycling and waste made a $6.7 billion
economic impact in Ohio, U.S., and employed 14,000
people. Economists would classify this extra labor used
as a cost rather than a benefit since these workers
could have been employed elsewhere; the cost
effectiveness of creating these additional jobs remains
unclear.
Sometimes cities have found recycling saves
resources compared to other methods of disposal of
waste. Two years after New York City declared that
implementing recycling programs would be "a drain on
the city", New York City leaders realized that an
efficient recycling system could save the city over $20
million. Municipalities often see fiscal benefits from
implementing recycling programs, largely due to the
reduced landfill costs. A study conducted by
 27

the Technical University of Denmark according to the

Economist found that in 83 percent of cases, recycling
is the most efficient method to dispose of household
waste. However, a 2004 assessment by the Danish
Environmental Assessment Institute concluded that
incineration was the most effective method for
disposing of drink containers, even aluminium ones.
Fiscal efficiency is separate from
economic efficiency. Economic
analysis of recycling does not include
what economists call externalities:
unpriced costs and benefits that
accrue to individuals outside of private
transactions. Examples include less air
pollution and greenhouse gases from
incineration and less waste leaching
from landfills. Without mechanisms
such as taxes or subsidies, businesses
and consumers following their private benefit would
ignore externalities despite the costs imposed on
society. If landfills and incinerator pollution is
inadequately regulated, these methods of waste
disposal appear cheaper than they really are, because
part of their cost is the pollution imposed on people
nearby. Thus, advocates have pushed for legislation to
increase demand for recycled materials. The United
States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has
concluded in favor of recycling, saying that recycling
efforts reduced the country's carbon emissions by a net
49 million metric tonnes in 2005. In the United
Kingdom, the Waste and Resources Action
Programme stated that Great Britain's recycling efforts
reduce CO2 emissions by 10–15 million tonnes a
year. The question for economic efficiency is whether
this reduction is worth the extra cost of recycling and
 28

thus makes the artificial demand creates by legislation

worthwhile.
Wrecked automobiles gathered for smelting
Certain requirements must be met for recycling to
be economically feasible and environmentally effective.
These include an adequate source of recyclates, a
system to extract those recyclates from the waste
stream, a nearby factory capable of reprocessing the
recyclates, and a potential demand for the recycled
products. These last two requirements are often
overlooked—without both an industrial market for
production using the collected materials and a
consumer market for the manufactured goods,
recycling is incomplete and in fact only "collection".
Free-market economist Julian Simon remarked
"There are three ways society can organize waste
disposal: (a) commanding, (b) guiding by tax and
subsidy, and (c) leaving it to the individual and the
market". These principles appear to divide economic
thinkers today.
Frank Ackerman favours a high level of government
intervention to provide recycling services. He believes
that recycling's benefit cannot be effectively quantified
by traditional laissez-faire economics. Allen
Hershkowitz supports intervention, saying that it is a
public service equal to education and policing. He
argues that manufacturers should shoulder more of the
burden of waste disposal.
Paul Calcott and Margaret Walls advocate the
second option. A deposit refund scheme and a small
refuse charge would encourage recycling but not at the
expense of illegal dumping. Thomas C. Kinnaman
concludes that a landfill tax would force consumers,
companies and councils to recycle more.
 29

Most free-market thinkers detest subsidy and

intervention, arguing that they waste resources. The
general argument is that if cities charge the full cost of
garbage collection, private companies can profitably
recycle any materials for which the benefit of recycling
exceeds the cost (e.g. aluminum) and do not recycle
other materials for which the benefit is less than the
cost (e.g. glass). Cities, on the other hand, often
recycle even when they not only do not receive enough
for the paper or plastic to pay for its collection, but
must actually pay private recycling companies to take
it off of their hands. Terry Anderson and Donald Leal
think that all recycling programmes should be privately
operated, and therefore would only operate if the
money saved by recycling exceeds its costs. Daniel K.
Benjamin argues that it wastes people's resources and
lowers the wealth of a population. He notes that
recycling can cost a city more than twice as much as
landfills, that in the United States landfills are so
heavily regulated that their pollution effects are
negligible, and that the recycling process also
generates pollution and uses energy, which may or
may not be less than from virgin production.
Trade in recyclates
Certain countries trade in unprocessed recyclates.
Some have complained that the ultimate fate of
recyclates sold to another country is unknown and they
may end up in landfills instead of being reprocessed.
According to one report, in America, 50–80 percent of
computers destined for recycling are actually not
recycled. There are reports of illegal-waste imports to
China being dismantled and recycled solely for
monetary gain, without consideration for workers'
health or environmental damage. Although the Chinese
government has banned these practices, it has not
 30

been able to eradicate them. In 2008, the prices of

recyclable waste plummeted before rebounding in
2009. Cardboard averaged about £53/tonne from 2004
to 2008, dropped to £19/tonne, and then went up to
£59/tonne in May 2009. PET plastic averaged about
£156/tonne, dropped to £75/tonne and then moved up
to £195/tonne in May 2009.
Certain regions have difficulty using or exporting
as much of a material as they recycle. This problem is
most prevalent with glass: both Britain and the U.S.
import large quantities of wine bottled in green glass.
Though much of this glass is sent to be recycled,
outside the American Midwest there is not enough wine
production to use all of the reprocessed material. The
extra must be downcycled into building materials or re-
inserted into the regular waste stream.
Similarly, the northwestern United States has
difficulty finding markets for recycled newspaper, given
the large number of pulp mills in the region as well as
the proximity to Asian markets. In other areas of the
U.S., however, demand for used newsprint has seen
wide fluctuation.
In some U.S. states, a program
called RecycleBank pays people to recycle, receiving
money from local municipalities for the reduction in
landfill space that must be purchased. It uses a single
stream process in which all material is automatically
sorted.
Criticisms and responses
Critics dispute the net economic and
environmental benefits of recycling over its costs, and
suggest that proponents of recycling often make
matters worse and suffer from confirmation bias.
Specifically, critics argue that the costs and energy
used in collection and transportation detract from (and
 31

outweigh) the costs and energy saved in the

production process; also that the jobs produced by the
recycling industry can be a poor trade for the jobs lost
in logging, mining, and other industries associated with
production; and that materials such as paper pulp can
only be recycled a few times before material
degradation prevents further recycling.
Journalist John Tierney notes that it is generally
more expensive for municipalities to recycle waste
from households than to send it to a landfill and that
"recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern
America."
Much of the difficulty inherent in recycling comes
from the fact that most products are not designed with
recycling in mind. The concept of sustainable
design aims to solve this problem, and was laid out in
the 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We
Make Things by architect William McDonough and
chemist Michael Braungart. They suggest that every
product (and all packaging it requires) should have a
complete "closed-loop" cycle mapped out for each
component—a way in which every component either
returns to the natural ecosystem
through biodegradation or is recycled indefinitely.
Complete recycling is impossible from a practical
standpoint. In summary, substitution and recycling
strategies only delay the depletion of non-renewable
stocks and therefore may buy time in the transition to
true or strong sustainability, which ultimately is only
guaranteed in an economy based on renewable
resources.
— M. H. Huesemann, 2003
While recycling diverts waste from entering directly
into landfill sites, current recycling misses the
dispersive components. Critics believe that complete
 32

recycling is impracticable as highly dispersed wastes

become so diluted that the energy needed for their
recovery becomes increasingly excessive.
As with environmental economics, care must be
taken to ensure a complete view of the costs and
benefits involved. For example, paperboard packaging
for food products is more easily recycled than most
plastic, but is heavier to ship and may result in more
waste from spoilage.
Energy and material flows
Bales of crushed steel ready
for transport to the smelter
The amount of energy saved
through recycling depends upon
the material being recycled and
the type of energy accounting
that is used. Correct accounting
for this saved energy can be accomplished with life-
cycle analysis using real energy values, and in
addition, exergy, which is a measure of how much
useful energy can be used. In general, it takes far less
energy to produce a unit mass of recycled materials
than it does to make the same mass of virgin
materials.
Some scholars use emergy (spelled with an m)
analysis, for example, budgets for the amount of
energy of one kind (exergy) that is required to make or
transform things into another kind of product or
service. Emergy calculations take into account
economics that can alter pure physics-based results.
Using emergy life-cycle analysis researchers have
concluded that materials with large refining costs have
the greatest potential for high recycle benefits.
Moreover, the highest emergy efficiency accrues from
systems geared toward material recycling, where
 33

materials are engineered to recycle back into their

original form and purpose, followed by adaptive
reuse systems where the materials are recycled into a
different kind of product, and then by-product reuse
systems where parts of the products are used to make
an entirely different product.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) states
on its website that "a paper mill uses 40 percent less
energy to make paper from recycled paper than it does
to make paper from fresh lumber." Some critics argue
that it takes more energy to produce recycled products
than it does to dispose of them in traditional landfill
methods, since the curbside collection of recyclables
often requires a second waste truck. However,
recycling proponents point out that a second timber or
logging truck is eliminated when paper is collected for
recycling, so the net energy consumption is the same.
An emergy life-cycle analysis on recycling revealed
that fly ash, aluminum, recycled concrete aggregate,
recycled plastic, and steel yield higher efficiency ratios,
whereas the recycling of lumber generates the lowest
recycle benefit ratio. Hence, the specific nature of the
recycling process, the methods used to analyse the
process, and the products involved affect the energy
savings budgets.
It is difficult to determine the amount of energy
consumed or produced in waste disposal processes in
broader ecological terms, where causal relations
dissipate into complex networks of material and energy
flow.
ities do not follow all the strategies of ecosystem
development. Biogeochemical paths become fairly
straight relative to wild ecosystems, with reduced
recycling, resulting in large flows of waste and low total
energy efficiencies. By contrast, in wild ecosystems,
 34

one population's wastes are another population's

resources, and succession results in efficient
exploitation of available resources. However, even
modernized cities may still be in the earliest stages of
a succession that may take centuries or millennia to
complete.
How much energy is used in recycling also
depends on the type of material being recycled and the
process used to do so. Aluminium is generally agreed
to use far less energy when recycled rather than being
produced from scratch. The EPA states that "recycling
aluminum cans, for example, saves 95 percent of the
energy required to make the same amount of
aluminum from its virgin source, bauxite." In 2009,
more than half of all aluminium cans produced came
from recycled aluminium. Similarly, it has been
estimated that new steel produced with recycled cans
reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 75%.
Every year, millions of tons of materials are being
exploited from the earth's crust, and processed into
consumer and capital goods. After decades to
centuries, most of these materials are "lost". With the
exception of some pieces of art or religious relics, they
are no longer engaged in the consumption process.
Where are they? Recycling is only an intermediate
solution for such materials, although it does prolong
the residence time in the anthroposphere. For
thermodynamic reasons, however, recycling cannot
prevent the final need for an ultimate sink.
— P. H. Brunner
Economist Steven Landsburg has suggested that the
sole benefit of reducing landfill space is trumped by the
energy needed and resulting pollution from the
recycling process. Others, however, have calculated
through life-cycle assessment that producing recycled
 35

paper uses less energy and water than harvesting,

pulping, processing, and transporting virgin
trees. When less recycled paper is used, additional
energy is needed to create and maintain farmed
forests until these forests are as self-sustainable as
virgin forests.
Other studies have shown that recycling in itself is
inefficient to perform the "decoupling" of economic
development from the depletion of non-renewable raw
materials that is necessary for sustainable
development. The international transportation or
recycle material flows through "... different trade
networks of the three countries result in different flows,
decay rates, and potential recycling returns".: 1 As
global consumption of a natural resources grows, their
depletion is inevitable. The best recycling can do is to
delay; complete closure of material loops to achieve
100 percent recycling of nonrenewables is impossible
as micro-trace materials dissipate into the environment
causing severe damage to the planet's
ecosystems. Historically, this was identified as the
metabolic rift by Karl Marx, who identified the unequal
exchange rate between energy and nutrients flowing
from rural areas to feed urban cities that create
effluent wastes degrading the planet's ecological
capital, such as loss in soil nutrient production. Energy
conservation also leads to what is known as Jevon's
paradox, where improvements in energy efficiency
lowers the cost of production and leads to a rebound
effect where rates of consumption and economic
growth increases.
This shop in New York only sells
items recycled from demolished
buildings.
Costs
 36

The amount of money actually saved through

recycling depends on the efficiency of the recycling
program used to do it. The Institute for Local Self-
Reliance argues that the cost of recycling depends on
various factors, such as landfill fees and the amount of
disposal that the community recycles. It states that
communities begin to save money when they treat
recycling as a replacement for their traditional waste
system rather than an add-on to it and by "redesigning
their collection schedules and/or trucks".
In some cases, the cost of recyclable materials
also exceeds the cost of raw materials. Virgin plastic
resin costs 40 percent less than recycled
resin. Additionally, a United States Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) study that tracked the price of
clear glass from 15 July to 2 August 1991, found that
the average cost per ton ranged from $40 to $60 while
a USGS report shows that the cost per ton of raw silica
sand from years 1993 to 1997 fell between $17.33 and
$18.10.
Comparing the market cost of recyclable material
with the cost of new raw materials ignores
economic externalities—the costs that are currently not
counted by the market. Creating a new piece of plastic,
for instance, may cause more pollution and be less
sustainable than recycling a similar piece of plastic, but
these factors are not counted in market cost. A life
cycle assessment can be used to determine the levels
of externalities and decide whether the recycling may
be worthwhile despite unfavorable market costs.
Alternatively, legal means (such as a carbon tax) can
be used to bring externalities into the market, so that
the market cost of the material becomes close to the
true cost.
 37

Working conditions
Some people in Brazil earn
their living by collecting and
sorting garbage and selling them
for recycling.
The recycling of waste electrical
and electronic equipment can
create a significant amount of
pollution. This problem is specifically occurrent in India
and China. Informal recycling in an underground
economy of these countries has generated an
environmental and health disaster. High levels of lead
(Pb), polybrominated diphenylethers
(PBDEs), polychlorinated dioxins and furans, as well as
polybrominated dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs and
PBDD/Fs), concentrated in the air, bottom ash, dust,
soil, water, and sediments in areas surrounding
recycling sites. These materials can make work sites
harmful to the workers themselves and the surrounding
environment.
Possible income loss and social costs
In some countries, recycling is performed by the
entrepreneurial poor such as the karung
guni, zabbaleen, the rag-and-bone man, waste picker,
and junk man. With the creation of large recycling
organizations that may be profitable, either by law
or economies of scale, the poor are more likely to be
driven out of the recycling and the remanufacturing job
market. To compensate for this loss of income, a
society may need to create additional forms of societal
programs to help support the poor. Like the parable of
the broken window, there is a net loss to the poor and
possibly the whole of a society to make recycling
artificially profitable, e.g. through the law. However, in
Brazil and Argentina, waste pickers/informal recyclers
 38

work alongside the authorities, in fully or semi-funded

cooperatives, allowing informal recycling to be
legitimized as a paid public sector job.
Because the social support of a country is likely to be
less than the loss of income to the poor undertaking
recycling, there is a greater chance for the poor to
come in conflict with the large recycling
organizations. This means fewer people can decide if
certain waste is more economically reusable in its
current form rather than being reprocessed. Contrasted
to the recycling poor, the efficiency of their recycling
may actually be higher for some materials because
individuals have greater control over what is
considered "waste".
One labor-intensive underused waste is electronic and
computer waste. Because this waste may still be
functional and wanted mostly by those on lower
incomes, who may sell or use it at a greater efficiency
than large recyclers.
Some recycling advocates believe that laissez-
faire individual-based recycling does not cover all of
society's recycling needs. Thus, it does not negate the
need for an organized recycling program. Local
government can consider the activities of the recycling
poor as contributing to the ruining of property.
Public participation rates
Single-stream recycling increases
public participation rates, but
requires additional sorting.Better
recycling is a priority in
the European Union, especially in
Central and Eastern Europe
among respondents of the 2020-21 European
Investment Bank Climate Survey.
 39

Changes that have been

demonstrated to increase
recycling rates include:
 Single-stream recycling
 Pay as you throw fees for
trash
In a study done by social
psychologist Shawn Burn, it was
found that personal contact with
individuals within a neighborhood
is the most effective way to
increase recycling within a
community. In her study, she had
10 block leaders talk to their neighbors and persuade
them to recycle. A comparison group was sent fliers
promoting recycling. It was found that the neighbors
that were personally contacted by their block leaders
recycled much more than the group without personal
contact. As a result of this study, Shawn Burn believes
that personal contact within a small group of people is
an important factor in encouraging recycling. Another
study done by Stuart Oskamp examines the effect of
neighbors and friends on recycling. It was found in his
studies that people who had friends and neighbors that
recycled were much more likely to also recycle than
those who did not have friends and neighbors that
recycled.
Many schools have created recycling awareness
clubs in order to give young students an insight on
recycling. These schools believe that the clubs actually
encourage students to not only recycle at school but at
home as well.
Recycling of metals varies extremely by type. Titanium
and lead have an extremely high recycling rates of
over 90%. Copper and cobalt have high rates of
 40

recycling around 75%. Only about half of aluminum is

recycled. Most of the remaining metals have recycling
rates of below 35%, while 34 types of metals have
recycling rates of under 1%.
"Between 1960 and 2000, the world production of
plastic resins increased 25 times its original amount,
while recovery of the material remained below 5
percent.": 131 Many studies have addressed recycling
behaviour and strategies to encourage community
involvement in recycling programs. It has been
argued that recycling behavior is not natural because it
requires a focus and appreciation for long-term
planning, whereas humans have evolved to be
sensitive to short-term survival goals; and that to
overcome this innate predisposition, the best solution
would be to use social pressure to compel participation
in recycling programs. However, recent studies have
concluded that social pressure does not work in this
context. One reason for this is that social pressure
functions well in small group sizes of 50 to 150
individuals (common to nomadic hunter–gatherer
peoples) but not in communities numbering in the
millions, as we see today. Another reason is that
individual recycling does not take place in the public
view.
Following the increasing popularity of recycling
collection being sent to the same landfills as trash,
some people kept on putting recyclables on the
recyclables bin.
Recycling in art
A survey showing the share of
firms taking action by recycling
and waste minimisationUniseafish
– made of recycled aluminum
beer cans
 41

Art objects are more and more often made from

recycled material.
Embracing a circular economy through
advanced sorting
technologies
By extending the lifespan of
goods, parts, and materials, a
circular economy seeks to
minimize waste and maximize
resource utilization. Advanced
sorting techniques like optical and robotic sorting may
separate and recover valuable materials from waste
streams, lowering the requirement for virgin resources
and accelerating the shift to a circular economy.
Community engagement, such as education and
awareness campaigns, may support the acceptance of
recycling and reuse programs and encourage the
usage of sustainable practices. One can lessen our
influence on the environment, save natural resources,
and generate economic possibilities by adopting a
circular economy using cutting-edge sorting technology
and community engagement. According to Melati et
al., to successfully transition to a circular economy,
legislative and regulatory frameworks must encourage
sustainable practices while addressing possible
obstacles and difficulties in putting these ideas into
action.
 42

Chapter 3
Processing Data

In doing English Project Work in topic of How to

make plastic bottle broom. We use equipment and
process as follow;
Equipment
1. Board and paper A4
2. Glue and color
3. Scissors
4. Dictionary
5. Website
6. Computer and printer

Process
We use “PDCA Circle” to proceed our project work.
Duration Lists of proceeding Organi Time
zer
4-15 Plann - Agree on a topic, All A
Nov. ing determine the membe week
2024 final outcome. rs
- Structure the A
18-29 project and All week
Nov. prepare members membe
2024 to gather rs
information.
2-13 Doin - Study and gather All A
Dec. g information. membe week
 43

2024 - Produce the rs A

16-27 project carefully. All week
Dec. membe
2024 rs
2-17 Jan. Chec - Compile and All A
2025 king analyze membe week
information and rs
check some
20-28 mistakes by A
Jan. 2025 editor. All week
- Practice and membe
check for rs
presenting the
final project.
3-7 Feb. Actio - Present the final All A
2025 n project and membe week
evaluate. rs
Mterials of making plastic bottle broom

1. Plastic bottle
2. stick
3. Scissors or cutter
4. Hot glue
5. Nail and Hammer
6. Rope

Processes of making plastic bottle broom

1. Prepare used plastic bottles and clean them

thoroughly.
2. Cut off the bottom of each bottle, leaving only
the top part.
3. Cut the side of the bottle into thin strips and roll
them with a stick.
4. Boil them for 3–5 minutes.
 44

5. Remove the plastic line from the stick.

6. Wrap the plastic line around another stick
tightly.
7. Combine the plastic bottle strips with the stick.
8. Hit a nail into the broom tightly.
9. Use the plastic broom to sweep.

Problems and obstacles

1. The members have different idea and some

members are not agree.
2. Some members have a mistake in pronunciation of
the words.
3. Some information is wrong and not clear.

Solutions

1. Use the democracy to decide the problem.

2. Ask the professional or teacher for sure about
correct pronunciation and information.
Chapter 4
Result

In doing English Project Work in topic of How to make

plastic bottle broom, we conduct information and
present the result as follow:
1. Materials of making plastic bottle broom
2. Processes of making plastic bottle broom
3. Vocabularies about making plastic bottle broom
1. Materials of making plastic bottle broom
Materials / Equipment Name of Materials /
Equipment
 45

Plastic bottle

stick
46
 47
Materials / Equipment Name of Materials /
Equipment

Scissors or cutter

Hot glue

Nail and Hammer

Rope
 48

2. Processes of making plastic bottle broom

Processes of making Description

1. Prepare used plastic

bottles and clean them
thoroughly.

2. Cut off the bottom of

each bottle, leaving only
the top part.

3. Cut the side of the

bottle into thin strips and
roll them with a stick.
.
 49

Processes of making Description

4. Boil them for 3–5

minutes.

5. Remove the plastic line

from the stick.

6. Wrap the plastic line

around another stick
tightly.
.

Processes of making Description

 50

7. Combine the plastic

bottle strips with the stick.

8. Hit a nail into the

broom tightly.

9. Use the plastic broom

to sweep.

3. Vocabularies about making plastic bottle

broom
Vocabularies Meaning
 51

plastic (adj.) พลาสติก

bottle (n.) ขวด
stick (n.) แท่งไม้
cutter (n.) อุปกรณ์หรือ
line (n.) เครื่องมือที่ใช้
combine (v.) สำหรับตัด
broom (n.) เส้น
wrap (v.) รวมกัน
tightly (adv.) ไม้กวาด
boil (v.) ห่อ, พัน
remove (v.) แน่นหนา
sweep (v.) ต้ม
roll (v.) กำจัด
prepare (v.) กวาด
nail (n.) ม้วน
hammer (n.) จัดเตรียม
clean (v.) ตะปู
thoroughly (adv.) ค้อน
ทำความสะอาด
อย่างละเอียด

Chapter 5
Conclusion and Suggestions

Conclusion of the Study

 52

In doing English Project Work in topic of How to make

plastic bottle broom, we study the information and
vocabularies about making plastic bottle broom,
present the information in English and have project
work skills.

Expected Outcome

1. Studying the information about making plastic

bottle broom.
2. Learning the vocabularies about making plastic
bottle broom.
3. Know how to present the information in English about
making plastic bottle broom.
4. Getting good English skills for communication.
5. Linking the Knowledge with the lesson and daily life.
6. Getting English project work skill.

Suggestions

We should study and make the other useful things

from recyclable waste such as
plastic bottle cap basket, plastic bottle flower vase,
paper flower wall hanging craft and plastic bottle
stationery holder.