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What are the cans, plastic bottles, and glass bottles that you bring back to the store turned into? Below are examples of products that can be made from refundable containers.
(Sidebar video: produced by www.vousetesici.ca; directed by K and Mélanie Ladouceur; music by Mathieu Dandurand)
| ALUMINIUM | PLASTIC | GLASS |
| Cans* |
Polar Fleece Clothing
|
Insulating fibreglass materials |
Wrapping paper
|
Shopping and garbage bags
|
Glass microbeads for light-reflecting paint or abrasive materials |
Bicycle frames
|
Helmets |
Sandblasting spray
|
Various containers
|
Clothes hangers
|
Ceramic tiles
|
Auto parts (cylinders hear, rim, gear box, etc.)
|
Auto parts (bumpers)
|
Asphalt |
Basebal bats
|
Construction materials
|
Road understructure
|
Garden furniture
|
Helmets
|
Pots |
|
Rope |
Concrete blocks
|
|
Tents |
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*Cans are melted down to make aluminum sheets that are used to produce new cans, which are available on store shelves on average 60 days following the recovery of used cans.
The transformation process by which cans and bottles are turned into everyday objects includes several stages.
Transformation process for aluminum containers
- Pick-up teams collect bags filled with refundable containers and deliver them by truck to a processing plant.
- A blower system opens and empties the bags.
- A magnet separates the aluminum containers from the plastic bags, which are dropped into a chute.
- A vertical press machine compresses the cans into dense bales that weigh between 410 and 450 kg. These bales are then shipped in a flatbed trailer to recycling plants.
- At the recycling plant, the bales are shredded to remove dirt and moisture.
- The shredded bales are conveyed into a delacquering oven to remove paint and varnish.
- The aluminum fragments are fed into a reverbatory furnace, where they are shaken up, and melt and blend in with the molten metal already present in the furnace.
- At a certain target temperature, the molten aluminum is discharged into filters.
- The molten aluminum is then poured into molds that cast rectangular ingots, where the metal cools.
- The ingots are sent to other plants where they are transformed into new aluminum cans.
Transformation process for plastic containers
- Plastic bottles follow the same path as aluminum containers until the sorting process at the processing plant.
- Green plastic containers are sorted and separated from transparent plastic containers.
- The sorted batches are then fed into a shredder where they are shredded into tiny flakes.
- The flakes are processed in a flotation tank to remove labels and caps, then washed and melted.
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