Indoor Plastic Recycling–Not a good idea

Over a year ago, I decided that a common material that I ought to harness for projects was plastic. I mean, we use 2-3 milk cartons a week and several juice containers a month, why not melt them into a new form? (Ha-ha, naive guy that I am, I thought this would work.)

There are several reasons why this was stupid.

1—I didn’t know what was going to happen.
When you don’t know what’s going to happen and you are dealing with heat, do it outside. Seriously.

2—I was working with a fossil fuel product and that means: FLAMMABLE!!! Let’s just say that the flames were higher than I would have guessed for the small amount I tried to melt. They also kept regenerating after I thought I had them out. That sort of thing tends to frazzle me. (How would you recommend telling your landlords you burned down their place because you wanted to make plastic stuff without buying the plastic?)

3—My wife didn’t know about it before hand… (’Nuff said.)

What I ended up with (after I took it outside to the little charcoal barbeque I use) was a brown/grey sheet of plastic so brittle I broke it when I touched it.

Having explained why this was not my best idea–I still think there is a possibility of melting and reshaping plastic. I have talked with some friends who work in chemistry and they said if I could get the plastic to a temperature high enough to mushify (ok, that’s my term, not my friend’s and no “mushify” is not a word) the plastic, but not high enough to ignite it or break the molecular bonds between the little atomic bits, then it should work. Not to mention that plastic is recycled all the time–how do they do it?

And if you do try to melt plastic, there is one thing I did do right, don’t use your wife’s or mom’s good frying pan–it will blacken it with stuff no one should ingest.