Recycling in soft drink companies

Woman drinking

Bottle making process

The soft drink beverage bottles get made via a method that is known as the stretch blow moulding. First, the PET pellets are injected inside framing then they are heated and put into a different mould, which is a thin-walled tube of plastic called a parison. The parison is cooled down and cut to the proper length. Next is when the parison tube is re-heated and put into a different mould which gets shaped into the soda bottle along with a screw top. A mandrel is a steel rod that slides into the parison. Highly pressurised air will shoot through the bottle shape and fill up the parison, pressing it against the inside walls of the mould. The pressure of the air will stretch the plastic radially and axially. The combination of the stretching and the high temperature in the right direction will cause the molecules to polarise, line up and then crystallise to create the concave shape found at the bottom of soda bottles. This shape allows the bottle to stand up straight without falling over.  The mould will then need to be cooled down; this gets done in many ways. Water in the pipes will go through the shell; room air is shot into the bottle to cool it down directly, liquid carbon or highly pressurised moist air.

It is important to cool it down quickly in order to set the bottle before the creep {flow} happens.

The bottle will then get removed from the moulding. Most times, the small bottles are created continuously in a string of attached bottled that become separated and trimmed.

There are a few soft drink manufacturers that create their bottles, but you will find most get sent down from other manufacturers.

Plastic bottles recycled

The recycling of soft drink bottles

There is a large number sitting in the billions, which is of the PET bottles that are produced every year and then thrown away, which remains a severe environmental worry. Some action has already been taken to stem the waste flow, which is mainly in the area of recycling. PET doesn’t fetch a high price at the recycling centres as aluminium does, so its at a one to two per cent recovery rate. The products that have been made from recycled PET bottles in automotive parts, carpets, concrete and insulation.  In the year 1991, the first PET soda bottle appeared using recycled PET. Consisting of around 25 per cent of the recycled PET, the bottle got introduced by the Coca-cola brand. By 1992 the container was getting used among 14 other states by different manufacturers like Pepsi. Despite the PETS high recycling rate when compared to various plastics, companies and officials are calling a plan to make it even higher. The current plan is to look into the PET incineration, which claims that if done correctly, the completely combustible products are just water and carbon dioxide. The current goals of the federal and state government are that up to 50% of the PET will be recycled. The recycling PET needs to be made available to over one half of the US population, and that 4,000 curbside programs for recycling to be implemented into the manufacturing companies alongside households.

More needs to be done within the manufacturing companies when it comes to their bottle recycling process in the depot and checking just how much is getting recycled.