Plastic Scrap
imgeMMP are also dealing with plastic scrap. When compared to other materials like glass and metal materials, plastic polymers require greater processing to be recycled. Plastics have a low entropy of mixing, which is due to the high molecular weight of their large polymer chains. A macromolecule interacts with its environment along its entire length, so its enthalpy of mixing is large compared to that of an organic molecule with a similar structure.


Heating alone is not enough to dissolve such a large molecule; because of this, plastics must often be of nearly identical composition in order to mix efficiently.