We use millions of plastic bottles and containers every day. If everybody just disposes of one plastic container each day that number comes to many millions each day and in reality many of us dispose of more than just one plastic item.

Every day you might drink a bottle of water, eat a sandwich purchased in a store and cook a pre-prepared meal in a plastic disposable container. That would be a typical day for millions of ordinary people but you also need to consider all the plastic containers businesses large and small are using and disposing of every single day. It all amounts to an enormous amount of waste plastic material to be recycled.

Plastic comes in several different forms and they cannot all be combined to melt down and reuse because they are so different. This means that all this waste plastic needs to be sorted into the different types of plastic material for recycling. The huge amount of waste plastic makes it impracticable to sort it all by hand and there are several technological solutions available to help separate the different types of plastic so they can be sorted and reused.

The video below shows just one example where the machine is fed by a conveyor belt and the plastic material is sorted using infra red light to distinguish between the main types of plastic waste and then air is used to blow the individual items into the appropriate bin.

We have a huge problem with the amount of waste we produce but solutions like this help us reduce the impact and should also save money in the long run.

Here are a few quick thoughts on some alternative ideas of recycling junk mail to put it to some use instead of just throwing it out  or preferably recycling your junk mail.

1) Give it to your kids to play with. They can tear it up, make paper planes with it, make paper hats with it or just color in the faces or any other shapes on the assorted pieces of paper you get.

2) If the junk mail contains a letter or any paper printed on one side only keep these sheets of paper and use the back of them as scrap paper. If they are a typical letter sixed piece of paper cutting into halves or quarters and then putting the resulting smaller sheets of paper together in a clip gives you a handy little scrap pad. Saves money and helps reduce your impact on the environment.

3) Burn it. Piles of paper do not burn very well on a fire though individual sheets do burn well if you have the patience. You can buy or construct a press to crush the paper into a ‘brick’ or paper log which can then be burned much like wood or coal. You have to tear the paper up into small strips and then soak it all in water for a while. The mush is then drained off and put into the press and pressed into shape. You then need to put the paper log somewhere protected from the weather so it can dry in the air. This may take a while. Probably a few weeks. The result is a paper brick that can be burned on the fire and heat your home for free.

4) Give it to your friends. Yes, seriously. Only if they actually want it, of course. If any of your friends need scrap paper or they make paper logs to burn at home then they may be happy to receive additional supplies of their raw material. It doesn’t do any harm to ask and making paper logs to burn and heat their home for free may be an idea they haven’t thought of but would quite like to try.

5) Recycle it. Yes, I know that is a bit of a cop out but at least recycling junk mail does mean it gets reused and manufactured into something else that is hopefully more useful.

We know more about the world now than any generation that went before us. To some of our ancestors the planet Earth was an enormous repositary of materials with unlimited supplies of minerals to be discovered and mined. We now know a lot more about the world we live in and this small ball of rock spinning throough the universe is the only place we can call home and we need to look after it.

The planet has limited resources and they are the only ones we will ever have to use. If we run out of oil or gas, or any of the valuable minerals we mine and convert into products and materials  then mankind will have to somehow learn to live witrhout them.

We can all try to use less energy and to avoid waste but we should also attempt to recycle the products we no longer require to help prolong the resorces available to our children and our children’s children in the future.