CarbonLite: Inside the World's Largest Plastic Bottle Recycling Plant | SoCal Connected | KCET
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- CarbonLite is the world's largest "bottle-to-bottle" plastic recycling plant in Riverside, Calif.
"SoCal Connected" takes a look inside the state-of-the-art facility where billions of plastic bottles are churned on an annual basis. The process involves transforming old plastic bottles into PET pellets and flakes in order to produce new plastic bottles.
The bottles are required to go through metal detectors, a special "prewash" phase, and a label-removing facility before they can become shiny, brand new pellets.
Even though your plastic water bottle might not weigh as much, a square bale of plastic bottles can weigh more than 1,300 pounds, as Derrick Shore reveals in this segment of "SoCal Connected."
Want to learn more? Watch more SoCal Connected at bit.ly/3RDN0hN
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Each state should pay to have this factory built in their state. This will keep it all local and create jobs
Building these facilities in every state would reduce plastic in our oceans and would create millions of jobs!
Beverage companies should pay for that not public funds.
@I'mBatman seek Jesus.
@@kraut1982 ha, good luck trying to convince them that.
So who pays the workers?
Ive been using and reusing the same six glass Snapple bottles for 8 years now. They wash up very nice in my dishwasher.
Do you still use that bottle?
insane... i did the same with the green tea arizona glass bottle... i love the design of it enough to weirdly use it over and over
Too bad Snapple uses plastic now.
vomit 🤮
Try not to do that cause the water will be contaminated with micro plastics overtime and kill the plant
More and more of these recycling facilities should be opened across the country.
I am 44 and still can remember a visit to a milk bottling plant. I still can see very clearly the washing line with the glass bottles upside down, being washed with soapfilled water and then heading to a drying section in order to be refilled, relabed and recapped to be put in the market again. And a german brand uses for its milk and its yoghurt only glass containers and bottle we then return to the supermarket for reuse, even cheaper and energy saving than recycling them. If that brand could, others could follow suit. I still can remember how, in my country, in the 80s, all this single use packaging and products started. In many cases I feel that correcting those aberrations that were imposed onto us, means simply to return to old habits that included customers and factories as part of closed circular loops of reuse. And certainly for bottling, glass is always the best option.
When I lived in Germany, they used heavy duty plastic bottles. Get credit at the store to recycle the.m. They wete sent off to be cleaned and reused. Didn't even have to break them down to make into new bottles.
Love Germany recycle system. So many things there are common sense. Separate plastic, paper, glass and metal. Waste not want not.
So many people don't realize plastic bottles RARELY get turned back into bottles. I love the fact this plant actually does this!
The world is moving into digitalizing recycling, it feels amazing to earn through investing in recycling businesses and initiative.
@@OleksandraKhlusand how does that work please
You know, I wish reporters would ask helpful questions. For example: "Should I leave the cap in place or through in the bin separately?".
The cap is made of a different material. Removing the caps makes it easier for the recycling facility.
In nz we are told to leave the cap on as hey are too small for the initial sorting machines to sort by themselves. 30% of the weight in labels, lids and leftovers in the bottle are chucked out
@@scottbc31h22 - Thanks! I typically recycle about 300 PETE water bottles every 6 to 8 weeks, and I did not know that it is preferred to recycle them without the caps. I will start bagging them for recycle with the caps off as of today.
The bottles are anyway cut into small pieces using a crusher and so are the caps so leaving them on or inside the bottle doesn’t make a difference
@@theanfielddiary4514 wrong!!! it is best to recycle a clear bottle separate from the cap and label. i cut the labels off my bottles prior to recycling, and i remove the cap and the ring around the bottle neck
I like how Leon is always smiling, he seems like a great guy and he’s doing some great work
"Do you ever wonder where it goes?"
Yes. Or I wouldn't be watching this video.
Where I live the bottles wind up on the roads
Exactly what I thought.
Ayy thats a good won like do you ever wonder were it goes yes or I wouldn't be watching this ayy good job
Savage
Anyone here remember when we drank from glass bottles. Returned and got washed. Sold again.
Gm Br In Germany they have hevy duty reusable plastic bottles...
Yes that is quite sensible!
better n many ways, but heavy and expensive to transport, thus fossil fuel intensive
To some a soda tasted better from a glass than plastic bottle.
Glass bottles are still used in the Philippines
this is simply one of the best videos ive watched on youtube, it turns me on when i see large industries working for the benefit and responsible coexistence of society in a capitalist economy
ya boi
It is probably and inefficient operation and results in even more pollution.
@Prowler Cam Which is part of the beauty: even amoral people can be induced to act morally when the economics indicate that it's preferable.
@@PrezVeto true
When you die bequeath all of your money to those who are doing these types of things for society.
Simple solution to recycling......
1/. Each type of plastic is allocated it’s own colour
2/. Cap and bottle must be the same type of plastic
3/. Labels must be water soluble and use water soluble glue
4/. Public educated to separate plastic from other materials I.e. take plastic cap off metal tube.
5/. Heavy penalties on non-conformance
What is the method used to remove labels from the bottles?
@@OO7ronaldo As of right now, recycle plants powerwash the bottles, spraying the lables off
6. States are expected BY LAW to provide recycling bins and trucks to come pick them up.
I have picking garbage on beaches in Northern Norway for 3 years now. On beaches where people haven’t lived since 1950, before plastic was invented. We find mostly plastic. A lot of that is plastic bottles. Some are Norwegian of course, but most of them are foreign bottles! I am amazed that not every country have the return system that California, Germany and the Nordic countries have!
Just to give an example on how long things float: In even norther than where I live they found a thing used for lobster fishing. It was located to a fisherman in Nova Scotia...
Runar, we have almost 40 million population in California, and with that many people, the number of plastic bottles used just for water every day is staggering. Tens of millions, I've heard, EVERY DAY. Then add to that plastic bottles for other liquids and food products like mayonnaise, salad dressing, dishwashing liquid, laundry bleach, and the total number of plastic containers discarded by Californians every day is almost uncountable. And far too much of it is ending up in landfills. I personally recycle all of our household containers, and I get about 10¢ each for the heavy-weight PETE bottles (for carbonated beverages), and 5¢ each for the light weight ones. The last load I took to the recycle place, about 6 kitchen trash sized bags full, I got about $30. And I got to feel good about being part of the solution instead of part of the problem. The county I live in has 6 or 7 recycle places for household waste and they accept plastics, aluminum, glass, and household steel scrap, like food cans, up to 1 kg in weight per piece. Heavier steel scrap can be recycled at a facility that specializes in scrapping junked cars; they have a big hammer mill that can shred whole automobiles, and larger pieces of scrap metal, like a discarded refrigerator or laundry machine. California has a State Government Agency whose only business is promoting recycling.
@@laura-ann.0726 : Funny how you would write this, just when I took out the garbarge and was annoyed of my neighbours that didn't sort it enough.
Most of what you are telling is really great and I wish more was like you and your county.
In my region of 25 000 people on several island the waste company of 4 municipalities is doing a good job. Every house has serveral rubbish bins outside:
Paper, food waste, metal and glass packaging (in the same), plastic (collected in a bag) and 1 with "rest garbage" or what is left. The last is sendt to sweden to be burnt for electricity. Food waste is made to earth locally and paper/glass/metal is sendt to either south of Norway or Europe to be recycled. It is collected every 2nd, 4th og 6th week.
Also: In every municipality we have facility where we can deliver more and bigger things. Like bigger metal, building material, garden waste and so on. Much is free to deliver.
So it is a great system. It just annoy me when people dont use it.
But you are right it is great to be a part of the solution. But one thing is recycling our waste, another is to reduce the amout of waste we create. I think that is more effectfull, but maybe also harded. Do we need a new bottle for water, printing paper and plastic around so many things, new electric equipment and so on...
Thank you for writing. Good that many people focus on this.
Oregon was one of the very first states to adopt a return policy.
2:06 Lesson: At the recycling plant any plastic bottles that have caps on them are deemed to be contaminated, are sorted out, and may end up in landfill, or sent to another destination. (Most of the bottles that end up at the $60 Million Carbon Lite facility come from redemption centers that require turned in bottles to be uncapped. The caps are made of different plastic than the bottles themselves. It's easier to get rid of the whole bottle then to unscrew the millions of bottles that have caps) At home, we should remove the caps from recycled bottles to increase what is actually reused
In Australia there is container deposit divided by State delineations. In the State of New South Wales I am fairly sure that they have it as just as well leave the friggin' caps on the plastic bottles. Yep. They'd prefer the caps, or lids, left on, as far as I know. Certainly not essential but nevertheless actually preferred. They still won't actually tell anyone what they do with those friggin' PET and HDPE bottles, so keeping the lids on reduces small litter pieces, and maybe they just lob it all into power station furnaces or maybe the lids on both the PET and HDPE bottles are colored HDPE and there is a market for that. They won't tell you what they do with the collected deposit containers. They only give us feel good stories of charities and schools making money on the collections.
You mis understood what he said. He said they end up with 70% of the mass that comes in, since caps and labels are removed. I’m assuming not all bottles are 100% empty so during the washing they also remove the leftover liquids and the weight/mass is reduces further. Not that if the cap is left on it gets thrown out. That’s what I understood from what he said. Correct me if I’m wrong
Coca-cola should build their own.
Use recyclable metal cans. Keeps soda cold longer too.
Big Soda doesn't care about us.
Warren Winter that make sense to me
@@NicholasLittlejohn *Big Soda*
Coke does. Not in usa. Utube it...
I recycle both plastic bottles and cans. I just hope that more companies will use them to make bottles either with partially recycled plastic or fully recycled plastic.
that's the issue. This is not happening. We're just sorting it and shipping it all to China.
Brian Washington hi ..... I'm from Pakistan... I'm the student of environmental science....I want to know it from u plz guide how to build???
As you know that is only 1%. It’s a shame when the public put so much effort into reclining to find out that 99% isn’t.
@@ohmusicsweetmusic Not anymore. China has stopped taking plastic "recyclables" from the West because we were sending them mostly trash. Now that there's no where to ship them, many communities have stopped collecting recyclables for the present, or the plastics are going straight to landfill. We need more companies like CarbonLite to spring up across the country, and other states have to start collecting deposits on containers to encourage more recycling.
Wow, we need a lot more of these plants.
The more you know. Great video. It was very informational and makes me glad to see that CA is so ahead in this recycling business.
awesome,we need more of this
yea and create profit :)
and save the planet :)
Perfect video! well done!
I wonder how much energy was used to recycle all those bottles
Philfbaby well which is more useful, the material or the energy?
They might have solar panels.
Better be from photovoltaics.
Better to re use and waste energy than to flood the planet with trash
I wonder about the entropy of the whole system, they seem very confident when they talk about getting rid of all the processes needed to create a new bottle by "recyling". Nobody seems to take chemistry seriously here.
Thank u. A very well informing video
They should put water filling stations everywhere and get people to pay for a permanent bottle so that you don't have to have to put liquids in a bottle to buy
how many bottles can people carry? actually there are such water stations, at least here in California
they’re called water fountains and water bottles
@@hm-yu6tw haha! Yeah almost too simple. Buy a damn Nalgene bottle and fill it before you leave the house. Then just stop buying disposable plastic bottles.
I really hope this becomes more widespread across the country.
These are the real heros! good work :)
Thank you for this informative video.
Wow!I have never heard of such a thing.Continue your good work👍🏻
Great episode. Very informative!!
Sounds promising but still better to avoiding purchasing items in plastic ultimately 😊
you typed that on a device using plastic its impossible to avoid
It's good to know how plastic is recycled, it should put this on the billboard so everybody to see
I love to see this happening in the US. Im danish and we have had this for 20years, its a really good thing. And even if someone is like " i dont need the deposit back" and just throws it in the street, some homeless person will find it and take it back:D
Every region needs at least one of these plants to keep our products and recycled materials in the USA
Bottled water should be banned. I grew up drinking out of a garden hose an it was fine.
Chris Loewen So because you lived in a place that had clean water, people who don’t should drink from the hose? Some people eat other humans and some humans eat only extremely old food so, does this mean we should all do it because people survive? Water isn’t just for drinking and we aren’t dogs.
@Captcha Neon No... if you live someplace that has shitty water and you get sick and die, that's okay. It's called removing weaker people from the gene pool. That way the people that survive their children will be stronger and we wont have to fuck with bottling water. If we would just let nature solve its own problem the recycling and trash problem wouldn't exist. How do you like those truth apples? Not PC, but the most efficient.
Use a metal or glass cup instead of plastic bottles 😃
@@jasonchecchi1558 or resue then
@@CaptchaNeon That bottle water is costing our oceans all the fish in them. So much micro-plastic in the ocean that fish will not be able to survive.
Excellent job...U save environment... Weldon sir
*I can imagine if a semi carrying those food grade pellets in bags got pulled over, the cops would probably freak out thinking they found the mother load of drugs* 😂
Excellent contribution towards environment.
Hope this type of companies also exist in India and it every state.
Thank you California
Wow 🤩 that’s another good job 👏..!!
Why this vid doesn’t have millions of likes 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
I always wondered what happened. Interesting video
Totally cool. It should be happening everywhere. But states must subsidize it to help.
Each country, province, or state in the world should have this kind of facility to help the environment. Instead of shipping trash to other countries, I think this will be a better solution or stop producing plastics.
love to see 2020 update on this
2021 update:
I work for the biggest PET recycling company in the world with headquarters in Taiwan (FENC).
We have two plants in Ohio and one in Virginia in the states. I'm not sure if the place in this video is still around but we're making a dent here in Ohio.
Great video, it's always nice when people shed light on the process behind recycling. I'd just be careful making the statement that "these bottles can be used an infinite number of times". Remembering, this facility only processes 20% of the bottles Americans are putting in the trash (which you can bet the company is only accepting the highest grade pre-sorted plastic bottles), and of that only 70% comes out the other side. So, if we do the math only 1*.2*.7= .14, 14% of that bottle you just put in the bin is actually recycled. I just find a lot of people have this assumption that if they throw it in a recycling bin, some how all of it gets fully recycled or down-cycled. Not understanding that while it feels great to put something in the recycling bin, statistically the majority of what they put in there ends up in the trash.
We need this in Texas
14.11.2021 we need an updated video on this please.
What's the carbon footprint of the facility?
This is exactly what I imagined
Amazing. The sterilization technique is praise worthy. I didn't know we can use Reprocessed Granules for food industry applications
Leon and his team are the best of the best when it comes to PET recycling. State of the art facility, very well managed and excellent QA.
Lies again? RP education
this is good
4:30 Oh really? In Japan, we use more energy to make materials from recycled materials than just make materials from the ground.
Excellent, thanks for sharing. I have always been concerned that whenever I (or anyone) sorts plastic bottles that we did not do a 100% thorough job, and I am glad that it is sorted a final time. Plastic is not biodegradable (usually), and it costs a lot of money and resources to mine new materials. I am very glad they have this facility. God Bless you all.
What's so great about it? Sure we clean it and melt it but then what? That's where we are going wrong.
Plastic is biodegradable, it just takes 150-200 years which isn't too bad if it's stored in a landfill. However, 150-200 years in the enviroment is catastrophic.
@@sirmario1some types i heard it takes more
Very cool!!!
This must be the norm all over the world
Awesom!
that is good
Whoa super interesting
I would love to know how or where to find the machines to do this process because I would love to own and operate a company that does this
This would make a great field trip for environmentally friendly schools. Great video!
thank you 👍 i am a big fan of plastic
The California plant featured in this video just sold to the Sterling Group for $ 57 million. The Sterling Group has Greenbridge, which deals in making plastic strapping and cord and various plastic junk, but its subsidiary, Evergreen, specifically, gets the CarbonLITE plant in Riverside, California, and which is particularly committed to bottle-to-bottle recycling and post-consumer recycled PET for food and beverage packaging.
Great video. Gotta know though. What happens to the labels? Are they just thrown away or sent to another facility for recycling?
Have a good day productions ideas 😊
I had a presentation about environment last time and one of the audience ended up asking me how exactly factories around the world recycle bottles and what will they become? I just answered the question with my own theory and thank goodness it was correct.
I didnt know susan collins went to work for a recycling institute after writing the hunger games
Good
Lmao
Nice 👍🏻
lovely video ..... ♡
have a question .. here is recycling of plastic bottles .. but what about that labels and caps which machine separated from bottles and then recycle the fine plastic bottle materials
its humbly request to answer me ..
If this was such a great idea we'd have seen these popping up across the country over the past 7 years. Now I'd like to see a video on the finances of this operation.
Good video. Impressive company. I wonder how much, precisely, it costs to carry out this recycling process? And how profitable it is? In any case, it is something I'd like to see more of in the western world countries, particularly the USA and UK. Glass is no different. Glass is a huge man-made problem too and has caused huge contamination of the environment, though this is barely spoken about.
Very interesting, worth noting that many plastics can't be recycled however sophisticated the facility. Ok my question re plastic bottles containers etc, why aren't they washed and reused? That's surely a much much easier and less problematic system. I'd make say 3-4 bottle sizes that all drink manufacturers have to use nation-wide, make a really good quality product initially and then just wash and reuse. I have soup containers I use for water pots and they have been going for years and years + are still absolutely fine and useable.
Fantastic processes, but, we need more preventative action in the first place such as encouraging people to have a recycle bin capped with bottle shapes bin cover, that might help reduce the process of filtering part which in turn save company overhead on water and power usage.
There are more plastic bottles in the ocean than plastic bottles that has been recycled ever
This is a good video. Teaches us how useful recycling is. Dirty air is bad for us. Just like cigarettes. Sadly there are some who remind me of the old puppet "Oscar the Grouch" on Sesame Street. From the days when I used to watch the show, Oscar was one character that loved trash and dirty air. Now I don't watch the show anymore, but I do remember the characters from those days. I care about clean air and our planet. One of the cool things about recycling is that it takes carbon dioxide from the air we breathe.
On my University I've heard about ideas in Chile, pretty good ideas...
Derick is cute!!!!
I wonder what the economics are like for recycling plastic bottles. Seem quite energy intensive
The world is moving into digitalizing recycling, it feels amazing to earn through investing in recycling businesses and initiative.
This is really awesome. However, what happens to the labels, the washing water, and the sterilization waste? Landfills ...
Or incineration to generate energy
michaelq Incineration generates a lot of carbon dioxide, so it's seems like a good idea to make the waste disappear but is very harmfull for the atmosphere
so is a volcano
And the teddy bears, t shirts and carpets.
Such a valuable product it never rots and will last for hundreds of years.
What can we use this absolutely free products.
All we need is to figure out what to do with it.
5.43 Are the plastic bags the recycled plastic beads are in recyclable? Just asking...
Very important business
wow
Video on making new bottles with those pellets?
what do they do with the labels ?
5:45 These are food-grade plastic pellets.... yum yum
are bottle caps and the label recyclable?
they do this in British Colombia Canada and zero other provinces do it. every state/province in the world should have one of these facilities.
We try to not use plastic bottles, like getting water in AL cans. Sometimes though you don't have an option but to use plastic. How many frozen dinners come in plastic? Pretty much all of them.
- Å fan! 👍
anyone else watching this as homework during lockdown lol
US states need to adopt the Pfand system from Germany
infinite life? no plastic quality degrade a lot after 2-3 cycles.
I agree that was a poor choice of words on his part. A better term would have been "indefinite".
But, about its quality degrading; into what does it break down?
Doesn't melting it into a liquid and letting it harden set the decay process back to the beginning?
+TheNoiseySpectator Well it will stay as plastic but not usable. it looses its elastic properties. Thats why recycled plastic get mixed with virgin plastic usually.
salamaza- Its elastic property is depleted. Could it be used to make something more rigid, like serving dishes, toys, or even altered into another class of plastics?
It seems like such a waste to have to discard it completely without it being at least partly reclaimed.
Recycled plastics are made into timber replacement products and also paving bricks and roof tiles.
Recycling plastic bottle and cardboard and more
What's the market rate/price for chopped and washed clear plastic per ton?
the recycled pellets are themselves packaged in plastic??
3:03 don’t hear that every day 😂
How much water gets wasted on the "recycling" of plastics? Is it cost effective? Just wondering?
In places where they don't have recycle plants , they should have a grinding machine where the bottles are grind into small pieces and used as a base under roads when roads are being constructed , a much better solution than land fill .