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How to Identify Plastic

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At Enviroline, having been around plastics for many many years then we sometimes forget that it isn’t always easy to identify plastics and figure out which plastic is which especially when sometimes they are all mixed up together in a pile ready to be sorted for recycling. That’s why we’ve put together a simple guide that we give you the tools to identify plastic easily and be able to sort it into the separate grades to enhance your return when selling it.

Identify Plastic that is Rigid or Hard

We all come accross so many things that are made from plastic in our day to day lives and some are easier to identify than others. The different names of plastic types can be confusing if you’ve not really been around them before or if you’ve always dealt with the more common ones like Polypropylene (PP or Polyprop) and Polyethylene (PE or Polythene) then it can be quite confusing when you get a new grade of material and you have to try and identify plastic that looks similar to the ones you’ve been dealing with but in reality it isn’t.

On the other hand some plastics look completely different but are indeed from the same polymer family such as Polystyrene. If you just identify plastic by looking at it then you would think that EPS (or to give it it’s American name STYROFOAM) which is the light, white soft fluffy stuff you get around a new TV, Washing Machine or Computer when it’s delivered, then you could easily be mistaken that it is a totally differnt type of plastic than some of the more common coat hangers or plastic cutlery you come accross.

However, once you break it all down to it’s core element then they are both just Polystyrene. OK there are some subtle differences but overall it illustrates why it makes sense to use our guide to help you easily identify plastic that you may have that you want to recycle properly.

Identify Plastic Film

The guide will help you if you are gathering together different types of plastic film into separate grades for baling as mixing together some Polypropylene and PET into bales that should be only Polyethylene for example, could massively reduce the value of the baled film considerably. If you are looking to identify plastic film quickly and easily then why not use this guide as a simple identification training aid especially if you have people in your sorting team that have never been around plastic recycling before and didn’t even realise that there was so many different grades of plastic film.