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PLASTIC REBORN

Jayant Jayakrishnan, July 20, 2011

Even if you have been vehemently saying no to

plastic, unless you are a serious eco-warrior,

you cannot live without the stuff. Its use! to

package most of your toiletries. Its the har!

shell aroun! your television, computer an!

telephones. Its use! for water bottles an! milk

cartons. Its in the refill of that pen in your

pocket. Its everywhere. "ow, if you are haunte!

by visions of these huge lan!fills where your

plastic waste, along with several tonnes generate! by the rest of the population, is leaching its

way into the earth you can sleep a little easier tonight. #ecause $uscat recycles.

%& lot of plastic trash is generate! in $uscat but '0 per cent of it is being recycle!,( sai! ) $

Johnson, the operations manager of $uscat *ilver Enterprises, a company owne! by +aitham

Ibrahim $ohame!. %If it wasnt it woul! be a big problem for the environment an! for the

municipality as they have to han!le all that is !umpe!.(

&ccor!ing to Johnson a staggering 00 tonnes of plastic waste is recycle! every month. It

begins with all the trash being carrie! away to the municipal waste !umping groun!s in the

outskirts of the city. here, municipality workers !o the horrific ob of sifting through the waste

an! separate plastic, glass, steel, aluminium an! paper /all !estine! for recycling from the

bio!egra!able waste that goes into the lan!fill. en!ers are then given to people who buy thetrash an! sell it !own the chain to the recycling plants - for plastic there are about ten in

$uscat. Johnson took us to one with a rather strange name an! !escriptor, $o!ern $uscat for

lastic *oli!arity - $alefactor of lastic 3epairing 4orms, owne! by his frien!, *ai! &li *alim

to show us the process.

%he waste plastic arrives here an! the workers sort it into !ifferent types of plastic,( sai!

Johnson. here is +5E an! 65E, the stuff use! to make soft bottles for cooking oils an!

shampoos7 *, the har! shell of televisions, phones, etc.7 E which is use! in plastic bottlesan! shopping bags, the list goes on an! covers foo! takeaway containers, car bumpers an!

almost every conceivable plastic.

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8/13/2019 Article Plastic Reborn

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%hen it is segregate! by colour an! shre!!e!,( sai! Johnson as he pointe! out sacks fille!

with cornflake si8e! chips of plastic.

%his is then washe! to remove impurities like foo!s an! oils before being fe! into the machine

where it is melte! !own,( sai! Johnson. 4rom the machine a thick cor! of polymer paste

emerge! an! was fe! into another tube from which it came out in 20 spaghetti-thick cor!s

which ran through a water trough to cool an! then went through a chopper where it was

re!uce! to shiny little pellets of warm plastic. %9an you imagine that this came from that

rubbish:( sai! Johnson as he no!!e! towar!s the mountain of technicoloure! trash.

*acks of the pristine recycle! green, grey, blue, yellow an! white pellets are sol! to companies

that use plastic in their manufacturing processes. $ost of $uscats recycle! plastic goes into

in!ustries in ;man but some of it is e0 per cent of the raw material - it is not strong enough on its own

an! nee!s to be mi