Reader question: Why can't PET bottles be made small?

Where is that? I haven't read it anywhere. And not only PET, but all plastic is collected.

Dear Johnny. I have to respond to this because when I had my own Trading office in Thailand, I was also in Recycling. I offered recycled paper and plastic from Australia, America and Europe and therefore visited many Manufacturers of Rubber, Plastic, Paper and Cardboard products. I also lived in Thailand and also collected from my household and separated waste for the merchants who visited the houses on their tricycle to buy. I also know the companies that press, grind and make bales. I know the price paid per kilo at home and the price paid at the factory gates. The people who buy rubbish are not the most intelligent and in Thailand a lot of things are done very impractically in our eyes and that will always be the case. In Thai education one learns facts but not logical and creative and thinking for themselves. They are very good at following orders but not good at taking initiatives and improvising. The collected whole plastic bottles are finally all ground up into very small particles before being melted down, but they are selected by color and clarity, which I think is easier if they are still whole than if they are deformed or cut up, maybe that is why? there is a lot of price difference between offered clear, colorless plastic than colored. there are also many different gradations in paper. Thailand protects their own recycling market. As long as there is sufficient local supply, one is not allowed to import! This is a good business.

I read all the comments and I don't want to compete to be right, but I have really been in the middle of the whole recycling business in Thailand and the Far East and as a Trader you were in the middle between Collectors who were sellers and Importers who were End producers were and used the recycled product for the production of, for example, new paper or plastic products. 15 years ago, Thailand imported an average of 40.000 Metric Ton of recycling paper per month from Supermix to high-quality selected cardboard, newspaper, magazines or tissue. A “trail order” to become a new supplier was 500 MT or 20 full 40 Foot containers. A standard order was 1000 – 2000 MT per order. The contracts specify a maximum “moister content” of 15%. If the percentage is higher, a claim will follow, so wet spraying is not an option. When my first containers arrived, I was called in when they randomly pulled apart a “bale” from a random container on a concrete spot and checked all the materials. The “Outthrow” were papers other than purchased, tape, staples and junk. The allowable “outthrow content” was usually 1 to 2%. I visited the "collectors" in Europe and America and checked their qualities, which sometimes did not mean that what you had purchased was actually shipped and then you had a major problem upon arrival. It is a large-scale and very serious business that cannot be compared to the system you see in Thai “Soi's” when the sun-dark people on their tricycle and a scale on the back of the carrier drive around to collect selected waste. . I think that the collection and selection of recyclable waste in Thailand is not much worse or perhaps better than here in Europe. As for the Pet, many families buy drinking water in large 20 liter tanks that you cannot place in a refrigerator, so they use rinsed soda bottles that you fill with drinking water and put in the refrigerator. If you see the recycled plastic at the end user, they are large bales (1 M3) filled with beautiful plastic granules, all separated by color per bale. The lowest quality products made from recycling plastic are usually seen in black, such as mortar tubs and construction buckets. I think I have been present at all phases of recycling materials: collecting, selecting, pressing, shipping, receiving, checking and storing. It looks amateurish in Thailand, but it's a good thing because there are many poor Thais who can earn a cup of rice (instead of a sandwich) in a simple way without investments.