What if a Manufacturer Led the Way in Recycling Plastic?

It’s easy to buy into the “I’m just one person so I can’t make a difference” mentality. If I’m not going to make a difference one way or the other, the thinking goes, why does it matter whether I throw my used plastic cup away at, say, a party? It’s just one cup, right?

That’s exactly the wrong attitude if we want to work towards the smart allocation of resources. A blog post from a website called Regaining Freedom asserts, “Plastic cups are a ubiquitous form of rubbish. They represent something that is manufactured, that consumes raw materials, is used once and then becomes landfill or is burnt.“ This product is truly the definition of waste material. We as a whole use a plastic cup once, then discard it without giving it a second thought. Think of every party you’ve ever gone to. Think of all of the mass quantities of once-used, then discarded cups that are strewn all over the premises at the end of a party, only to be collected and thrown away when the cleaning process ensues.

“We all know that recycling is good for the environment (reduce, reuse, recycle),” asserts Regaining Freedom. If we have adopted and accepted this mantra, and have dutifully taken on the responsibility to recycle paper and cans, why can’t this truth carry over to plastics? It can, it just has not been established as common knowledge, which makes what Axion International is doing with much larger scale plastic products such a novel idea.

If plastic is seen as something that is used once and then becomes landfill, we think it’s remarkable that Axion, utilizing proprietary technology developed by Rutgers University, has created a next-generation technology that is utilizing recycled plastic to create environmentally friendly composite containers that are made from nearly 100% recyclable materials. Rather than acting as a typical manufacturing or building materials company, Axion uses 100% recycled materials for production, significantly reducing the environmental footprint that the manufacturing industry has traditionally placed on the environment.

But creating large-scale products with recycled plastic is certainly not the only means of re-using plastic goods. We can start by using that plastic cup from the party as a planter for your windowsill or backyard. There are countless uses for plastics, and their durability allows us to use them over and over again.

Thanks to our thermoplastic technology, the versatility of plastic has just gotten deeper. So far we’ve built bridges and rail road ties, but there are many other possibilities. What are some creative uses of our technology that you can share with the rest of us? Leave them below as comments. Let’s change our attitude so that when we say, “everyone else is doing it,” we’re talking about recycling and re-using plastics in an effort to not only improve the environment, but also to create sustainable, longer-lasting and less expensive building materials.