Is recycling plastic difficult? I was at Lowe's the other day, and they had a recycled plastic tote. It was half the price of the same size non-recycled tote. I thought about buying it, but the texture was rough and sand papery, and there was this noxious odor emanating from it that actually made me cough a few times (I wasn't being dramatic, I was alone.) So in my head I thought to myself, is recycled plastic actually difficult to produce into a tolerable product, or are the big plastic companies trying to make me think this to make me shy away from recyclables, because both totes were made from the same manufacturer.
There are thousands of plastics. They are used for thousands of uses. Do you want to drink pop from plastic that was used of motor oil or acid or insecticide. The plastic used for say football helmets is so much different from that used for a pop bottle. Recycling plastics are a nightmare.
Yeah, unfortunately there is some downgrading in the quality of the plastic when it's recycled. That's why most recycled plastic ends up in things like water pipes and park benches where it doesn't matter so much and why recycled plastic isn't in as much demand as say, recycled aluminum. I think it's a big incentive to buy less plastic altogether. I'm surprised the difference was so huge between the bags though.
In general it is easy and inexpensive to recycle plastic. Your experience with the tote is strange and I wonder what was really being sold? To recycle plastic it is separated by type. PE. PP,PET and PETG are the most common packaging materials. Next comes the hardest part, which is removing all the labels and residues. Once the plastic is clean you just grind it into little bits and melt it to form pellets that can be melted and formed into new stuff. The amount of energy to do this is minimal. The plastic is not quite as strong, and cannot be made white or clear, but it is fine for many uses. These totes sound strange. Why would they have the rough texture, and the odor indicating a volatile outgassing? Plastics used for packaging do not outgas. Perhaps some new process that uses glue to bind dissimilar plastics? Best to leave those on the shelf.
