PET Recycling and Thermoforming

Barry PET Recycling, originally uploaded by Shep11.

This is from Shep11 at Flickr. Todd Shepherd is the business owner of  Shepherd Thermoforming which is in Ontario Canada. Thermoforming is the manufacturing process using heat in  molding plastic. Todd explains that "There is a problem in NA with PET packaging in the recycling stream. The only easily recognizeable PET is in the form of bottles. All other clear packaging could be PVC, OPS or some other polymer which will create problems if mixed with PET in the reprocessing equipment. The sorting process in homes and institutions is unreliable even with the help of the recycling symbol visible on most plastic packaging. Equipment is now coming on stream that will optically sort these polymers automatically and direct them to seperate streams which will then make plastic recycling a profitable venture, ease the environmental issues and reduce the negativity towards plastic packaging."