Do you want to start a plastic recycling business? Here in this article, we have written a comprehensive business plan guide on steps associated with starting a plastic recycling plant with methods, machines required, costs, and much more.
In order to know how to start a plastic recycling plant, you must know its importance apart from profitability. Plastic is a non-biodegradable waste, which cannot be decomposed naturally like many substances. The varied use of plastic in our daily lives on one hand and the absence of proper recycling facilities for plastic waste on the other is creating a great threat to the environment.
The main objective of a plastic recycling plant is to reduce the rate of plastic pollution and recycle them to make brand new products. Before going into the details, you must do some research to understand its demand and profitability. To be successful, you must have a well-researched business plan. The rate of profits is also very high, considering the constant demand for plastic goods in different forms.
10 Steps to Start a Plastic Recycling Business
1. Understand the Trade
First of all, get informed about the basic necessity to start a plastic recycling plant. Also, do market research and collect information regarding the demand, sourcing sources, and competition from local players.
2. Select the Niche
Secondly, decide on what kind of plastic you want to recycle before you go into the details of how to start a plastic recycling plant.
3. Have a Scrap Sourcing Plan
In the third place, you have to arrange for a network of scrap plastic collectors in order to start your plastic recycling plant.
4. Select a Location
Evaluate how much land is necessary to set up the recycling plant. If you want to do the business on a small scale, then the requirement for land is less.
Do remember, you need separate and closed space for machinery, a space for scrap plastics, and a clean separate space for recycled plastics. The rooms should have proper shade and be well-ventilated.
5. Register your Plastic Waste Recycling Business
Make your Plastic recycling business legally compliant. Register your company as per the best-suited business structure offered by company registration authorities in your location. Obtain the required licenses and permits needed to start and run a plastic recycling business.
For example, if you are planning to form a plastic recycling business in the United States, forming an LLC is a good option. This is because this type of structure helps to protect your personal assets and also ease the filing of annual taxes.
Also, check out the types of licenses and permits required to start and run a plastic recycling company in your locality.
6. Name Your Plastic Recycling Company
Select a catchy name for your plastic recycling business. It not only helps in building brand growth but also helps customers to relate to your products. You can check our detailed guide on the steps to be followed to name a business to learn more.
7. Buy Machinery
Next comes the machinery. There are different types of waste plastic machinery. Select one which suits your budget and the amount of production you are going to process.
8. Ensure Supply of Electricity
Ensure an uninterrupted supply of electricity to start a plastic recycling plant.
9. Learn the Recycling Process
Then comes the actual process of recycling and manufacturing new products, which is the key point in how to start a plastic recycling plant.
10. Hire Manpower
Last, but not least is the deployment of manpower. In order to start a plastic recycling plant and run the business successfully, you have to deploy expert(s) and skilled laborers to run the machine and produce the recycled product.
Now, let us go into the details of plastic recycling and how to set up a plastic recycling plant from a detailed and research-oriented perspective.
FAQs on Plastic Recycling Business
What is Plastic Waste Recycling?
Plastic waste recycling means the process of collecting scrap plastics and recycling them into useful things. The objective of recycling plastic is to decrease plastic pollution while putting less pressure on producing brand new plastic products. This method helps to preserve resources and checks plastics from landfills or other dangerous destinations such as oceans.
Plastics are durable, lightweight materials with a little price. You can easily mold them and make them used in a variety of fields. By recycling, and recycling the scrap into new substances and thus you can save new plastic manufacture. This recycling of plastic is extremely essential for the protection of the environment.
This plastic recycling plant will check the environmental pollution by hazardous plastic waste and put the stepping stone toward a healthier world.
In simple words, a plastic recycling plant goes through a few stages. They are, collecting the scrap plastic, and cleaning their impurities in the first step. And then in the second step, they are melted or shredded into flakes for reuse.
What is the Cost of Starting a Plastic Recycling Plant?
Setting up a recycling plant will require some investment. The areas of investment machinery cost, transportation and logistics costs, raw material costs, installation costs, and other miscellaneous expenses. The cost of a good quality waste plastic recycling plant will be in the range of $50,000 to $1,00,0000.
How can You Recycle Plastic Waste?
There are mainly six types of plastics. They are as follows:
- PS (Polystyrene) – Example: cups, plastic cutlery, containers
- PP (Polypropylene) – Example: lunch boxes, take-home food containers
- LDPE (Low-density polyethylene) – Example: garbage bins and bags.
- PVC (Plasticised Polyvinyl chloride or polyvinyl chloride)—Example squeeze bottles.
- HDPE (High-density polyethylene) – Example: milk bottles.
- PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) – Example: juice and soft drink bottles.
At present, only PET, HDPE, and PVC plastic products are recycled. PS, PP, and LDPE typically are not recycled. Some plastics are not recycled due to the lack of economic feasibility.
Normally, the plastic recycling process covers two steps. Firstly, sorting the scrap plastics of impurities either with the help of machines or by manual process. In the next step, the plastics are molten into new shapes or shredded into flakes.
Recently more sophisticated machines have made the work of sorting and recycling plastics easier and more cost-effective.
How Effective is Recycling Plastic?
How to start a plastic recycling plant is highly related to the importance of plastic recycling. Let us look into some interesting statistics which will prove the importance of starting a plastic recycling plant.
Plastics take hundreds of years to degenerate Plastics cover 10% of global waste generation. Furthermore, recycling plastic uses 88% less energy than producing plastics from new materials
Also, plastics thrown into the ocean bed kills millions of sea birds and mammals. The energy which you save by recycling a single plastic bottle can light up a 100wt bulb for nearly an hour.
These facts and figures show how important it is to start plastic recycling plants. A number of American states have made the recycling of plastic mandatory. European countries have also formulated laws to encourage and implement more and more plastic recycling plants.
Read: How to Make Money Recycling Batteries
What machines are Used to Recycle Plastic?
The process of recycling plastic requires specific machines. The collected scrap plastics after the cleaning of impurities are first compressed and then melted with the help of machines. Then it is given small shapes and cooled using cold water.
There are various kinds of machines. Some machines perform a part of recycling, while others do all the parts together. The kind of machinery also depends on the kind of plastic you are going to recycle. However, it is advisable to go for a large-scale machine.
Nowadays, modern innovations have made machines more cost-effective and much easy to operate. These machines use modern software which makes the process more accurate and sensitive, resulting in a better quality of production.
In conclusion, if you have the financial resources and the network, starting a plastic recycling plant can fetch you high returns.
About the Author: 99businessideas.com led by Rupak Chakrabarty is committed to helping beginners, entrepreneurs, and small business owners in starting, managing, and growing their business. Our aim is to educate the entrepreneur on the various stages of entrepreneurship.