The Plastics of Box Handles

Many people assume that box handles are made of new plastic; however, these handles are perhaps one of the largest consumption areas of recycled plastic.

One of the important things to remember about these handles is that they come in all sizes and qualities. While all box handles might look similar to laypersons, the materials used in the manufacture of these handles could be mixed in any ratio. The decision to use a specific mix depends upon the several factors such as cost of the run, the total budget of the client and the mix of plastic available for the job. However, since all mixes are easy to identify, a client could get their money’s worth when they opt for a particular type of box handles.

A lot of box handles are made of thermosetting plastics because of these plastics are easy to work with and require no special skills. In many cases, thermoplastics are also easy to recycle because all it takes is the high pressure and heat of the process for the reuse of these plastics.  Thus, these plastics could b recycles a couple of times without any issue.

A major aspect of the recycle process is the loss of some volume of plastic at every iteration of the process. This is considered normal because a certain portion of the plastic collected from recycling station is not fit for use in the process. 

The discrepancy in the required volume and the available volume of plastic is generally made up with the addition of fresh plastic. This means that there is no such thing as a plastic product made of 100% recycled plastic. There is always a percentage of fresh plastic in the batch. The addition of this plastic in the batch offers strength and color related characteristics to the final product.