Mercer Wrecking & Recycling
1519 Calhoun St., Trenton, New Jersey, United States

Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastics and reprocessing the material into useful products. Compared to glass or metallic materials, plastic poses unique challenges – because of the massive number of types of plastic, they each carry a resin identification code, and must be sorted before they can be recycled. This can be costly – while metals can be sorted using electromagnets, no such ‘easy sorting’ capability exists for plastics. In addition to this, while labels do not need to be removed from bottles for recycling, lids are often made from a different kind of non-recyclable plastic.

• The rising costs of placing waste in landfills
• Tough new government regulations
• Tax credits awarded to those who divert materials from landfills
• The availability of new recycling equipment such as mobile crushing and screening
• The population’s steadily growing concern for the environment
• Growth in government projects that generate C&D debris
• Increasing aftermarket value of recycled steel and lumber

Plastic is a versatile synthetic material and has integrated itself in human usage over the years. We wrap our food in it, store items in it, drink from it and eat off it, we have parties surrounded by plastic and even wear it; of all this plastic only 3 to 5 percent is recycled in America. Much of the rest of this plastic goes into landfills and takes 200 – 400 years to decompose.