Every year, we see new phones, computers, headsets, even new smart glasses as well as many other technologies. However, even though we don’t see them as often, there are tons of other innovations that help the entire world, especially innovations in recycling, which help the environment every day and constantly allow us to save the limited resources we have.

Improvements in Recycling Plastic

When recycling plastic, the three main technologies used are called pyrolysis, depolymerization, and solvent dissolution. Each technique uses different methods to break down the long chemical chains in plastics and turn them into different substances that can be reused to make many different things. Pyrolysis uses heat to do this, but depolymerization and solvent dissolution both use chemical reactions to break down the plastic. However, what is special about solvent dissolution is that it can break down and recycle electronic waste, which is similar to what we do at ReCharged. However, instead of breaking down electronic waste, we take it, repurpose it, and allow other people to use devices that would otherwise be rotting in someone’s garage.

Improvements in Metal Recycling

Recycling metal is an extremely useful practice for us. It helps save resources, helps lower manufacturing costs, and helps lower the prices of our devices because of that. However, metal recycling facilities constantly invest money into improving efficiency and reducing their environmental footprint. New systems like fire suppression systems, better containment systems, and processes for reducing emissions all help make metal recycling an environmentally and economically better tool to help us better the environment. Additionally, improvements in recycling other metals, such as the ones in batteries, have come along too. Recycling batteries has been fairly difficult due to there being many different types of metals in batteries, leading to some being lost and many purification steps being needed to get the valuable lithium out. However, researchers have recently discovered a new way to recover batteries, which uses oxalic acid to dissolve lithium and aluminum while leaving the other metals, which allows for a cleaner way to get these valuable materials out. There are still some metals lost in this process, but in the future, we will likely see more improvements in recycling as a whole. All of us, including us at ReCharged, are working to save resources and give the Earth a better future in the years to come.