The difficulties encountered in recycling manufactured materials
As you know, we use various kinds of materials for the manufacturing millions of products. These materials include pure metals, alloys, plastic, rubber, etc, which themselves have different properties due to the composition of the chemicals added to achieve certain material properties like color, strength, etc.
The highest degree of difficulty is encountered in sorting the materials while recycling. Like stated before, one family of material itself, say, metals, vary in composition. So the chemicals used and the processes required too vary drastically. For example, Cleaning of aluminium and extraction of gold can be achieved by acid treatment, but you cannot expect to do the same for iron or copper.
Most of the metals, which include inert metals as well as toxic ones like lead from batteries will come in corroded or worse conditions. Isolation of these materials from the good stuff are pretty dangerous.
The sorting becomes further harder, when it comes to treatment of plastics and disposed electronic products and batteries. Only a few kinds can be recycled, while others cannot. So one has to remove the kinds which cannot be treated or recycled in any way. Carelessness of those who dump non recyclable items into the recycle bin are the ones to be blamed for such troubles.
However, if automation can be done in the areas where manual presence is still needed, recycling can be made effective to a new level, thus further reducing the required quantity of raw materials for making a new batch of products. Also, the quantity of waste products scattered out in the open can be reduced as well.
