Mechanical recycling is the processing of plastic waste into new raw material by physical means, without changing the chemical structure of the polymer. The plastic is sorted, shredded, washed, dried, melted and formed into granules.
It is the most established, energy-efficient and lowest-carbon route for recycling plastics, and it produces the great majority of recycled plastic in use today. The typical sequence is sortation, shredding or grinding, washing, extrusion with melt filtration, and pelletizing. Quality depends on clean, well-sorted input, because contaminants are not chemically removed. Lucro, one of the leading plastic recyclers in India, is a mechanical recycler: its RecyClass-certified facility in Vankas, Gujarat, turns post-consumer plastic into rLDPE, rHDPE and rPP granules.
