Can You Recycle CDs?
Alls Quiet
question. I recycle everything possible and have been wondering for a
while if CDs are simple plastic that can be recycled with other
plastics, or--not. Thank you.
Jon Kirwan
If you use curbside pickup, I'd recommend calling your garbage service
or pickup service and just asking them, directly. What happens is
different in different areas and the best advice is to ask the folks
who deal with your other plastic recycling materials. They should be
able to tell you. If not, they should be able to refer you to the
companies they deal with for precise answers.
.......
I can talk a little more generally, which won't really answer your
question but may give you some ammunition when talking with your local
companies.
Some CDs (large scale production) use aluminum (or similar)
metalization that carries the 'bumps' for the data, sandwiched into
the plastic disk. Writable CDs, memory serving, use a polymer layer
with a colored dye that the laser is able to heat up and force a
'bump' to appear. Rewritable CDs include two colored layers, one for
writing and one for erasing. Those layers aren't of the exact same
material, but they are both dyed differently. One is kind of 'spongy'
and the other is more like a 'shellac'.
In any case, different CDs have slightly different materials in them
and __may__ require slightly different processing. Production CDs
using aluminum bumps are melted and then demetalized. The remaining
plastic might still be clear enough for higher valued purposes, if
they were able to be separated from the writable and rewritable CDs
before being melted together (their polymer layers get mixed in,
though, and probably would color the plastic if included.) [There is
an acrylic in there, though, so it's still impure.] However, I'm
guessing that recyclers currently don't have a way of sorting them
apart anyway, so those that do recycle CDs probably just lump
everything into a batch and go through a demetalization step to handle
production CDs that were included in the batch. If that's the way it
works (all CDs regardless of type are melted together), the resulting
plastic probably isn't good enough for food/medical use but probably
fine for automotive/building.
They can be recycled. But you will have to find some outlet that
processes them. Memory serving, they are made of a polycarbonate
plastic and most of it gets recycled in China, I think. Here is the
list of typical plastics with the recycling numbers:
#1: Polyethylene Terephthalate (PETE)
#2: High Density Polyethylene (HDPE)
#3: Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)
#4: Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE)
#5: Polypropylene (PP)
#6: Polystyrene (PS)
#7: Other
The polycarbonate would be "other," (I'm guessing... you need to make
that call) and I don't know of any curbside pickup services that
accepts #7 (or a few of the other ones, either, like #5.)
As I mentioned at the outset, if you mix them into your curbside
pickup I have no idea what happens in the processing. They may get
sorted out and thrown away or they may take the trouble to find a
connection here in the US that sends them off to China for processing.
You probably have to make that phone call.
Jon
Alls Quiet
> Some CDs (large scale production) use aluminum (or similar)
> metalization that carries the 'bumps' for the data, sandwiched into
> the plastic disk. Writable CDs, memory serving, use a polymer layer
> with a colored dye that the laser is able to heat up and force a
> 'bump' to appear. Rewritable CDs include two colored layers, one for
> writing and one for erasing. Those layers aren't of the exact same
> material, but they are both dyed differently. One is kind of 'spongy'
> and the other is more like a 'shellac'.
Wow! Thanks so much for this explanation. Something told me CDs
weren't simple plastic. I suppose an electronics recycling event would
be as close as I could come to having them recycled knowledgeably.
Thanks again.