Day 062 - 06 Dec 94 - Page 33
1 colour but, secondly, also about a strength. As you know,
2 polystyrene is a very long chained molecule. In the
3 recycling process, again you will have a breaking up of the
4 chains and, therefore, recycled polystyrene is of a
5 somewhat lesser grade than virgin polystyrene.
6
7 MR. MORRIS: It has to be reblown with Pentane in the UK or
8 whatever?
9 A. If you want to use it for a foam application, yes.
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Might I say, I do not want to pre-empt your
12 cross-examination in any way but you remember one of the
13 documents we looked at the other day, plant pots, coat
14 hangers, and I remember the date in the bottom right-hand
15 corner of that. I think at some stage in your
16 cross-examination you ought to pursue whether this witness
17 knows what, if anything, Lin Pac was producing at the time
18 of that document. It is the letter No. 4 or something of
19 that kind.
20
21 MS. STEEL: Right, OK. (To the witness): The process of taking
22 in the post-consumer polystyrene (and you went through
23 it): You said there was a manual separating, a sorting out
24 operation, and then a grinding, washing stage. In the
25 separating, sorting out stage, are they taking out
26 everything that is not polystyrene apart from food?
27 A. That is a very rough sorting where you take out
28 anything that is not plastic because their recycling plant
29 is actually capable -- the stages after that are actually
30 capable of separating the different plastic fractions. So
31 they do not have any recycled polystyrene. They also make
32 polyethylene and a polypropylene regranulate and I think a
33 PET, the bottles.
34
35 Q. But the machines can distinguish between the types of ---
36 A. The machines does not.
37
38 Q. -- plastic?
39 A. All these plastics have different densities, so if you
40 throw them in water -- if you sort of cut them up in very
41 little pieces, you throw them in water, some will float,
42 some will sink and some will stay somewhere in between.
43 That way you can make a reasonable separation. That is the
44 basis of the process of that, second stage process, washing
45 and separating of the different plastics.
46
47 Q. That would be when the food comes off at that stage.
48 Right. What about things like plastic coated paper or
49 something like that?
50 A. They do not do that.
51
52 Q. They cannot do that?
53 A. They do not deal with that. That is why that sort of
54 material would be picked out in the beginning as well -- at
55 least to my knowledge at this point in time they cannot do
56 that yet.
57
58 Q. But as far as food goes, that is washed out? That is not
59 taken out by hand?
60 A. Well, if they find on this big sorting machine that
