Recycling of engineering thermoplastics in business equipment-challenges and opportunities

Traditionally, engineering thermoplastics are used as covers, internal panels and enclosures for business equipment and computers. Today, most of these plastics parts are scrapped and sent to landfills at the end of life of the products. Recycling of engineering thermoplastics has become a major challenge for many business equipment and computer manufacturers. The challenge is to find closed loop recycling or similar applications for the many thermoplastics materials used in these products at the end of life. This paper examines the infrastructure required to recycle engineering plastics into quality flake material for reuse in copier applications. Also, the cost to recover parts and the opportunities to recycle the materials into similar or closed loop recycling applications is determined. In addition, the physico-mechanical properties of production parts molded from first and second generation recycled structural foam high impact polystyrene (HIPS)-SF were measured, analysed and are discussed. Finally, the paper summarizes some of the "trash-to-cash" projects being pursued at Xerox Corporation to maximize the savings from materials salvaged/recovered from their remanufacturing programs. In general, these activities support their overall environmental leadership program.<>