Economics of collection and sorting

Reclaiming is labour intensive. The material passes through more hands and is transported longer distances than virgin material. This greatly raises the cost of producing competitive material. The company PET Recycling Switzerland 

A number of criteria need to be satisfied to attain economically viable recycling of post-consumer plastics  

Companies can resolve their sourcing problems by developing their own infrastructure for collection. These collection schemes typically involve customers who supply dean and relatively homogeneous material which can be made into useful products [23, 24]. One example is the DuPont Partnership for Carpet Reclamation, which recovers nylon carpets from carpet companies for mechanical and chemical recycling. This scheme generates material approved for under-the-bonnet automotive applications. 

Each of the described collection and sorting methods have inherent strengths and weaknesses. They will most likely have to be used in combination to achieve good sorting. It remains to be seen whether the economy and energy efficiency of such systems will be competitive compared to incineration or landfill. As will be seen, the efficiency of this first step of plastics recovery determines not only the way the material will be recycled but also the applications for the generated feedstock. 

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