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

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