SAFE AND UNSAFE RECYCLING OF SOLID PLASTIC WASTES COLLECTED FROM CAIRO REGIONS -A FIELD STUDY

Mousa, A. M.(1); Abd El-Ghaffar, M. A.(2); Omayma E.A.(3) and El Sherif, A. Y.(4)
1) Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University. 2) NRC, Cairo, Egypt. 3) EPRI, Cairo, Egypt. 4) Cairo Governorate

ABSTRACT: Solid plastic wastes occupy a major part of the waste generated by different activities as Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), restaurants, factories, hospitals .etc. In general, solid wastes can be divided into two main basic types:

I. Environmentally friendly wastes that are biodegradable and can be decomposed if land filled or recycled to form fertilizers.

II. Non biodegradable solid wastes which do not decompose and cause serious environmental problems if land filled or incinerated in open air, such as plastic wastes generated from packaging materials used as containers for food, drugs, drinking water and soft drinks etc., in addition to plastic insulators, piping, foams construction waste and electrical insulators .... etc.

Most of the aforementioned wastes are mainly, PET, PE, PVC, PS, PC, PP or PMMA. A lot of this garbage is collected, sorted, recycled, processed and returned back to the consumers by illegal persons in small factories “under stairs” not following any national or international environmental or health regulations. This usually causes serious health problems to both the producers as well as to the consumers.

Recycling is one of the most important actions currently available to reduce the environmental impacts and represents one of the most dynamic areas in the plastics industry today. Recycling provides opportunities to reduce oil usage, carbon dioxide emissions and the quantities of waste requiring disposal.