Plastic has been around for over 100 years and has enhanced the lives of humans by creating everything from a sterile packaging material to drinking straws. For example, milk jugs, produce containers and medical devices, such as disposable needle cartridges, are commonly made from plastic. Plastic is often a more cost effective solution to glass, it allows food to be transportable using plastic containers and has brought medicine costs down because of plastic packaging.

While plastic has enhanced human lives, plastic harms the environment because they take a long time to decompose. One of the biggest challenges that we face is that humans are not disposing of plastic properly, which is causing a build up of plastic in our oceans and landfills.

Ways to Dispose of HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene)

Here are three common ways to dispose of plastic. While all of these methods are common, only one is eco-friendly and allows the plastic to be reused.

Thermal Treatment (Burning) - When plastic is burned, harmful gases are emitted into the air like carbon monoxide, chlorine and dioxins which can cause health problems when inhaled.

Landfill - Another way to dispose of HDPE plastic is to throw it into a landfill. This is a place where the plastic can degrade over time. However, it takes over 400 years for HDPE to degrade, so most of it still exists in some form, oftentimes in a landfill. With the landfills getting overrun by waste, we are running out of storage room for our plastic waste.

Recycling - Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Recycling is the most environmentally-friendly way to dispose of plastic waste. These programs make it easy to recycle plastic and other waste and sell it to companies to use to manufacture into useful products. The plastic waste is then converted into usable material. It reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators and prevents pollution of our air and waters, making the environment a safer place for living organisms.

At Hosung (Shanghai) WPC Co., Ltd., we take recycled plastic waste and create structural, durable and eco-friendly products that can be used for numerous applications in a wide variety of residential and commercial markets. The product is called Wood Plastic Composite, which is a great alternative to traditional building materials, it can lengthen the life of outdoor places such as decking, cladding, fencing, railing, backyard, gazebo and so on, while providing a durable and beautiful environment.

How do we do this?

The main material of HOSUNG WPC is natural wood powder (about 60%), by adding HDPE (about 30%) and necessary chemical additives. It is extruded out from special moldings under high temperature and pressure, which is 100% recycled, eco-friendly, saving forest and petroleum resources, and do not contain the toxic chemicals often found in pressure-treated lumber, and are manufactured in a process that produces zero water waste.

Wood Plastic Composite is a sustainable material choice because it is made recycled wood and plastic and additives in different proportions. Production of WPC materials encourages the reuse of wood and plastic waste which is otherwise sent to landfills. The use of wood plastic composites decreases the deforestation and plastic pollution, saves forest and petroleum resources.

Recycled WPC lumber is made from recycled plastic and is recyclable itself. It takes only one-tenth of the water to produce as traditional wood lumber. Reducing water consumption and protecting water quality are key objectives in sustainable building. By reducing water you can help conserve natural resources.

When choosing recycled WPC lumber, you reduce the usage of water and help conserve natural resources like wood and energy. There is little waste produced during the manufacturing process, unlike wood. Imagine all the billions of tons of plastic that can be ‘cleaned’ up from the environment by turning it into something that can be used an infinite number of times. That is the power of recycling.

HOSUNG Company proudly stands behind our green philosophy in providing environmentally-friendly, recycled structural plastic lumber products. We will always contribute to environmental protection, preventing plastic from building up in landfills and providing consumers with high-quality products.