UK Innovative Plastic Bottle to Bottle Recycling System  
It may sound unbelievable, but a recycling company in the United Kingdom successfully recycles used plastic bottles back into food-grade quality material in a process chain that involves several innovative technologies in three key stages:
• Sorting
• Granulating and Washing
• Decontamination

The plastic bottles arrive at the plant, squashed and compacted together into square bales, which typically weigh about 500 kg. The bales that contain both PET and HDPE bottles are fed into the bale breaker – six large rotating cork screws that loosen and open up the bale. The crushed bottles then pass through the trommel, which removes small bits of rubbish, such as stones and dirt, as well as any lids and caps that have come off the bottles.

Metal contaminants such as food and drink cans, screws and wire are then removed. A powerful electromagnet extracts steel objects and then an eddy current separator is used to remove any aluminium objects. Paper, carrier bags and films are then separated from the bottles by a row of air jets that blow light objects off the conveyor belt. With the majority of unwanted waste removed, the bottles are sorted by type of plastic and colour employing optical sorting machines into: clear PET bottles, light blue PET bottles, HDPE bottles, coloured PET and other plastics. Clear and light blue PET bottles and uncoloured HDPE bottles are granulated into flakes. The flakes are cleaned first by a dry cleaner and then a hot wash (80°C). A sink-float separator is used to separate PET flakes (which sink in water) from HDPE flakes (which float and are skimmed off). Both flakes are then decontaminated.

To return the PET flakes back into a food-grade product, a process developed by United Resource Recovery Corporation of the United States is used. The pure PET flakes are bagged and sold to plastic packaging manufacturers, to be made into new bottles or other food packaging. HDPE flakes are processed into food-grade material employing a Vacurema, which treats the flake under low pressure and high temperature. Heating the flakes to over 200°C melts them, eliminating any contamination. The molten plastic is extruded, filtered, cut into small pellets and cooled for use in making new milk bottles.

USA: Reclaiming and Recycling Plastics 
In the United States, it is reported that two experts Piyush Reshamwala and John Japuntich, have jointly patented a process for reclaiming and recycling plastic from discarded plastic articles. The process includes breaking down waste materials into pieces using mechanical force, removing non-magnetic pieces, separating out relatively heavy pieces from the non-magnetic pieces, segregating relatively non-conductive pieces from the heavier pieces and reclaiming plastic pieces from the relatively non-conductive pieces.

The recycling system includes a crusher for breaking down the discarded materials, a magnetic separator for the removal of relatively non-magnetic pieces, an air classifier for separating out relatively heavy pieces from the non-magnetic pieces, an electrostatic separator for segregating non-conductive pieces from the relatively heavy pieces, and a metal detector for separating out plastic pieces from non-conductive pieces. The recovered plastic is then easily moulded into useful products on regular plastic moulding machines.