Polyethylene Pipe Is Recyclable

Polyethylene pipe being reground for recycling Polyethylene (PE) is a thermoplastic material that is used to produce plastic pipe for water mains, service lines, irrigation, geothermal ground loops and other commercial and industrial applications. Since most thermoplastics can be ground, melted and easily reformed, in-house recycling of plastic pipes is a common industry practice. This series of photos shows a typical method to reprocess pre-consumer PE pipe in-house. In this case, regrind is added to the feed hopper along with virgin resin.

Finished PE Regrind Pipes are ground down to a size suitable for feeding the extrusion equipment.

A vacuum system transports the reground PE

Hopper feeding extruder line with reground material

Regrind PE entering pipe extruder

Plastic added to extruder exiting as new PE pipe In this machine, the ground material is heated and pushed through a die to produce a continuous length of PE pipe.

Finished PE pipe is printed (roll marked), spooled, cut to size and ready for a final inspection (All Photos courtesy of Silver-Line Plastics)