Over the years, the design and manufacture of plastic recycling plants have undergone several changes and development. This is firmly because of the increasing demand and quest of plastic recycling industries towards achieving recycled plastic pellets with the cleanest and most retainable composition for plastic production from a plastic recycling plant.

The plastic recycling process has five main stages of operations in a plastic recycling plant and plastic recycling plants are mostly classified based on these operations which are sorting, washing, shredding, identification and separation, and compounding. However, plastic recycling plants are classified into four broad classes which include sorting equipment, shredding equipment, washing equipment, and compounding equipment.

Plastic sorting equipment helps to sort out the mixture of plastic wastes and containers from various impurities in a plastic recycling plant or facility. They are further sub-divided into two groups namely sorters and separators according to their respective applications; sorters are used at the early stage of recycling in a plastic recycling plant before shredding and granulating operation to remove all non-plastic materials and impurities. The separators are used after the shredding operation in the identification and separation stage to remove further impurities such as label papers and organic impurities and also separate the plastic particles according to sizes and density.

Plastic recycling shredding equipment helps to shred and granulate plastic containers into plastic particles for further processing in a plastic recycling plant. The equipment helps to increase the surface area of the plastic waste through this process. They are also of different types depending on the manufacturer’s design choice and decision.

The plastic washing plant or equipment helps to wash the plastic wastes or particles to remove all unwanted or non-plastic impurities from the plastic materials in a plastic recycling plant. In recent time, plastic washing plant has been designed in such a way as to incorporate three different processes which include separation, washing, and de-watering. Such plastic washing plant also falls under separators as they also perform separating and resizing functions. They also offer higher efficiency in their operation as compared to equipment that adopts dry processing techniques as they effectively wash, separate, and resize plastic particles in a plastic recycling plant.

Compounding equipment is used to smash and melt the already processed and separated plastic particles into plastic pellets in a plastic recycling plant. The pellets are then further processed for plastic production in a plastic manufacturing process.